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THE 



NATURAL HISTORY 



OE 



SECESSION; 



OR, 



DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY AT NECESSARY, 
ETERNAL, EXTERMINATING WAR. 



BY 



THOMAS SHEPARD GOODWIN, A. M. 
I* 



. " The Union : it must and shall be preserved." 

Andrew Jackson. 

" Down with the traitor, and up with the stars." 

Battle Cry. 



NEW YORK: 
JOHN BRADBURN (Successor to M. Doolady), 

49 "WALKER STREET. 

CINCINI^ATI :• KICKEY & CARROLL, 73 WEST FOURTH STREET. 

BOSTON : A. WILLIAMS & CO., 100 WASHINGTON ST. 

1864. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S64, ?y 

TH05IAS SHEPAKD GOODWIN, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Maine. 



GEO, C. EAND & AVERY, 
STEEEOTYPEES AND PEINTEES, 3 COENIIILL, EOSTOW. 



PREFACE 



Some things to human view are accidents. The place 
they fill in any general system of things, and the assist- 
ance they render in any general process of advancement, 
are not discernible to human scrutiny. 

To some minds almost all things, except their own in- 
dividual existence, interests, and whims, are accidents, at 
least, not to say nuisances, that ought to be abated. 
They cry out with the same impetuous vehemence against 
the insect that disturbs their after-dinner repose, and 
against a league of traitors sworn to destroy the last rem- 
nant of their country's government or perish in the effort. 

About an equal amount of plausible persuasion would 
be required in the case of the insects or of the traitors, to 
induce this class of persons to cease their opposition to 
the outrage committed, and even to join in inflicting the 
like annoyance on their neighbors. 

Perhaps it is not an unlawful or unworthy aim to rid 
this class of the company of some who properly belong 
not to its number; and to do something in the j^resent 
emergency of our country's affairs to counteract the mis- 
chievous action of such of that number as remain. 

In ability for mischief, next superior to those who have 
no general system and are capable of comprehending 
none, stand the class who reason fallaciously or from false 
premises on matters of practical political importance. It 



IV PREFACE. 

is hoped that individuals of this class will find in the p^- 
ent treatise a fairness, thoroughness, and reliability of IR- 
gument which will commend itself to their respect, and, 
eventually, to their confidence, so far as they are sincere 
searchers after truth that they may act on it. 

The third and last class with whom the writer views 
himself as dealing is composed of those of greater or less 
ability of reasoning and sincerity of heart, either within 
or without the boundaries of the loyal States, who have 
become unconsciously but hopelessly impressed in fiivor 
of political sentiments and doctrines inimical to the exist- 
ence and well-being of Popular Government. That this 
class is both prominent and numerous among us, every 
day's inscriptions on the page of history verify. Of them 
the present writer asks no favor, no forbearance. If they 
are to triumph, he consents to die ; and he does not pro- 
pose to himself to go down to physical or political obliv- 
ion in silence or unavenged. 

But Popular Government is not an accident in this 
world's afi:*airs. It entered prominently into the original 
plan. From the dawn of Creation's morning, provision 
began to be made for its advent. An ancient prophet of 
God divulged the time of its coming, and declared that 
" it should stand forever." 

It is to be not only perpetual but universal. All the 
institutions of ancient monarchy are to be "broken in 
pieces and consumed " before it. It came not forth at the 
war of the American Revolution, to glitter for a time 
with delusive brightness and then go out in the night of 
universal despotism which prevailed before. It has not 
arisen and prevailed on this continent for three-quarters 
of a century, dispensing unparalleled benefits to those 
who have been the subjects of its mild, munificent sway, to 
sink irrecoverably before the first infuriate combination of 



PREFACE. V 

home-born and foreign despots that should league together 
for its destruction. The world's great Governor has not 
brought forth this antidote for all the ills of human tyran- 
ny, to bless the nations for a little while, and then become 
extinct through the absence of those qualifications for 
leadership which can be acquired only in a despotic state 
of society. 

Such are the convictions under which the following 
pages have been written ; and they are presented to the 
public, not without belief that they will contribute to 
impart to others a measure of the same deep-rooted and 
considerate faith in the worth, the necessity, the perpetu- 
ity of Free Government in which they have been written, 
and the same cahn purpose to sustain its institutions, or 
perish when they fall. 

That the present century is one of unexampled advance- 
ment and celerity of progress in all that pertains to the 
more useful arts and sciences, is obvious to every one. 
That this advancement and accelerated progress are due 
to the relaxation or abridgment of dictatorial rule, is one 
of those great truths which are gradually making them- 
selves felt and admitted without the puny aid of human 
logic. 

Both the celerity of general movement peculiar to the 
present age, — which leaves not time for tardy History to 
perfect its lessons, — and also the exigencies of the new 
form of civil government that has arisen to fill the place 
of departing monarchy, demand and justify the present 
attempt to bring the light of historical reflection to the 
aid of those on whom devolves the responsibility of 
defending, not only our existing government, but the 
very governmental genus to which it belongs, from the 
fierce and unportended perils that now assail them. And 



VI PREFACE. 

yet so brief and recent is the period in which historic 
Democracy is to be found, that any writing of reflections 
upon it must needs approximate to the writing of current 
history. 

The studies incident to preparing a previous and yet 
unpublished volume on the Passing Away of Monarchy 
conferred on the present author some preparedness to 
treat the topics presented in the following pages. This 
preparedness was augmented by thirty years alternate 
residence in different sections, north and south, enabling 
him, while familiar with the views and mental habits 
peculiar to either section, so far to rid himself from the 
controlling influence of these peculiarities as to be able 
to speak with historic fairness of them both. 

The time occupied in the production of the following 
pages was the intervals of professional business during 
the first two and a half years of war for suppressing the 
Secession conspiracy. The date of writing is sometimes 
introduced for the purpose of referring to events then 
passed, in illustration of views presented. 

During the time which has thus elapsed, many of the 
practical political positions with which the author set out, 
and which were then comparatively new and strange, 
have been extensively adopted by the people and put into 
operation by the government. While thus much of the 
novelty of the work will have been lost, this loss will 
have been measurably compensated by the increased 
appreciation by the public mind of the importance of 
the topics of which it treats. 

Most of the time spent in the prej^aration of the work 
has been devoted to attaining the greatest degree of con- 
densation compatible with clearness, in order, as far as 



PREFACE. Vn 

practicable, to bring its contents within the reach of that 
large and increasing class of men among us whose habit- 
ual readings approximate the limits of telegram. 

That the perpetuity of domestic slavery is compatible 
with the perpetual coexistence of free government on the 
same soil, is an opinion that has been very generally attrib- 
uted to the founders of this government, as generally 
entertained by the people of the country, until a recent 
period, and is still entertained by the great majority of 
the people, if we take the whole country into consider- 
ation. By historical argument, and by argument drawn 
from first principles, to confute an opinion that is sustained 
by so sage and so universal authority, -and in practical 
politics to take a position antagonistic to the principles 
on which the government of the country has been con- 
ducted from its origin, is thought to be a matter of such 
gravity as to demand minute, elaborate accumulation in 
the argument by Avhich tliat position is sustained. 

" To see ourselves as others see us," implies the posses- 
sion of a grace with which our natures are so sparingly 
endowed, that producing an accurate portraiture of one's 
self, or even of our government and national peculiarities, 
is no easy task. To the difficulty arising from this source, 
add the immature and undeveloped state of that type of 
government which is succeeding to the place of decrepid 
and departing monarchy, a type of which our own govern- 
ment is perhaps the only reliable specimen, and the result- 
ing accumulation of difficulties may perhaps excuse any 
lack of scientific clearness of arrangement that appears in 
the matter of the following pages. It is no ignoble achiev- 
ment to present well some features of a subject that still 
remains too imperfect or obscure to be entirely grasped, 
or perfectly portrayed ; leaving it for time and a subse- 
quent effi^rt or author, to finish what has only been well 
begun. 



VlII PREFACE. 

To the nnliternry character of the Southern people, or 
to their modesty, it appears to be due, that the religionists 
of the North have never enjoyed to any considerable ex- 
tent the benefit of their criticism. The decision of one 
of their superior judges, to the effect that a disbeliever in 
future rewards and punishments was not competent to 
testify in their civil courts, is a true index of a sentiment 
almost universally prevalent among them, different from 
what obtains at the North, and which has seldom been ex- 
pressed. 

In the following pages the apparent ignoring of the 
minor republics of the present and former days, results, 
partly from convenience in conducting the argument, and 
partly from the necessity of regarding the United States 
as alone responsible for maintaining the cause of civil 
Liberty before confronting monarchies, and not from any 
disposition to undervalue those bright but less potent 
heralds of the day of universal freedom from civil despo- 
tism. 

The violently agitated current of passing events, with 
the felt pressure of its enormous perils, must bring into 
occasional use and justify expressions of unwonted energy; 
such as would have been objectionable in times of pro- 
longed quiet, and used respecting events of only ordinary 
interest, or importance. The same circumstances will be 
found to induce, if they do not justify, a trifling expansion 
of the English language, by sometimes making use of 
words, the admissibility of which rests on but very recent 
authority. 

That no more time is at his disposal for perfecting the 
style and diction of the volume is matter of regret to 

THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS 



PAOB 



Introduction, 15 



I. 

Popular government succeeding monarchy — The greatness and diflacul- 
ty of the change — Basis of each — Sketch of the latter — Terms de- 
fined — Antagonism of the two — A continent divinely reserved for 
the development of free government, ..... 19 

II. 

Preparation and transfer of the people who were to inhabit the continent 
reserved for free government, ....... 23 



III. 

Two permanent settlements on this continent — The difference of charac- 
ter pertaining to the people of each, and the necessary results of this 
difference, .......... 26 



IV. 

Claim of the North to being considered democratic — Its validity and 
limit 30 



Claims of the South to being considered democratic examined, and found 
to have been sincere at first, but now false in the extreme, . . 35 

VI. 

Cause of the Southern lapse from democracy back to despotism — Imper- 
fect light with which the national constitution was adopted, . . 40 

IX 



CONTENTS. 



VII. 

Views with which the constitution was adopted— What that instrument 
did, and what it did not do for slavery, ...... 45 

VIII 

The Constitution adopted — Slavery abolished in the Northern States 

From what influences, and witli what results, . . . .48 

IX. 

Causes which operated against the abolishing- of slavery in the South — 
An aristocratic class always existed there — Climate made the negroes 
thrive — Few wliites had the intelligence to understand, or the energy 
to assert, their rights, 53 



X. 

Causes of the non-abolishment of slavery in the Southern States contin- 
ued — The enervation of the whites — The richness of soil — The great 
number of negroes — The poor whites acquire a love of idleness — The 
social influence of the negroes degrades and despotizes the whole 
white community, 59 

XI. 

The effect of slavery to countervail the progress and perfecting of the 
principles of free government in the Southern States, even among 
those who held their slaves at first unwillingly, . . . .66 

XII. 

Conditions which so modify slavery as to abate its influence in counter- 
acting the progress of free principles, . . • . . . ?0 



XIII. 

The gradual departure of those conditions which rendered Afi'ican sla- 
very in America mild in character and slight in influence during the first 
century or more of its existence, ...... 75 

XIV. 

The ultimate, positive, and eflicient, action of slave-holding in radically 
converting the sentiments of the Southern people back from democ- 
racy to despotism', . . . . ' . . . • . 80 



CONTENTS. XI 



XV. 



Argnment defined, and forces pointed out as tliey appear in history, which 
forces have formed and stimulated our Southern brethren to their pres- 
ent onslaught on all democracy, 86 

XVI. 

The above-defined argument presented in detail — The moulding pressure 
continually resting on those who feel themselves responsible for the 
preservation of quiet in the Slave States — Its efiect, . . .90 

XVII. 

Intensity of the antagonism betvreen the principles of free government 
and the principles on which slaves are governed — The latter analyzed 
— The precept — The penalty — Checks on the latter, . . . 97 

XVIII. 

The above analysis concluded — Checks on severe penalties — Benevo- 
lence of the master — These checks limited and reversed by State ne- 
cessities—Results, 102 

XIX. 

Results of above analysis recapitulated and applied, .... 108 

XX. 

Peculiar qualities conferred on the master of slaves by his position — 
Practical display of these qualities, ...... 113 

XXI. 

Other traits of character conferred by his position on the slave-master, 
fitting him for war; and displayed by his class in the present contest, . 119 

XXII. 

The fallacy of supposing that distinctions of color can constitute any per- 
manent limit to the despotic exercise of authority or greed for power 
on the part of slave-masters, ..... . . 125 

XXIII. 

Recapitulation — The several ways in which slavery acts, to reconvert 
masters from democracy to despotism, and to confer on them warlike 
qualities, .134 



Xli CONTENTS. 



XXIV. 



Antagonism of despotism and democracy overt and tangible — Military 
organization and action perfectly natural and healthful to a despotism, 
but difficult and destructive to a democracy, ..... 138 



XXV. 

Same general subject continued — The poor whites of a slave-holdinif 
community equivalent to a standing army, when contrasted with the 
destitution of combatants which marks a democracy, . . . 143 

XXVI. 

View of the altered condition of affairs in 1860, compared with 1789 — 
Was the present precipitation of hostilities necessary ? — As viewed by 
Northern men, it was not — As viewed by Southern men, it was, . . 148 

XXVII. 

Leading Southerners determine to divide the Union — Thirty years spent 
in maturing and preparing to execute the determination — Steps taken 
to that end, 152 

XXVIII. 

Origin and object of the pro-Southern political party under Jackson, . 158 

XXIX. 
The characteristic principles of Jackson's political party, . • • 163 

XXX. 

Some of the modes in which these principles operated, • • • 167 

XXXI. 

Results of the operation of the above-named principles, • • ,175 

XXXII. 

The prostration resulting to a patriotic minority, from the usurpation of a 
despotic few, controlling a majority, 180 

XXXIII. 

How the Jackson-Buchanan party became identified with Secession, . 185 



CONTENTS. XIII 

XXXIV. 

Kecapitulation of the part performed by the Jackson-Buchanan party in 
bringing about the present war, ....... 193 

XXXV. 

The abolitionists, ......•••, 199 

XXXVI. 

Mischievous diversity of views as held , North and South, respecting tlae 
abolitionists, .......... 205 

XXXVII. 

The despotic class in Europe identified with the despots of America in the 
existing onslaught to destroy democracy, ..... 212 

XXXVIII. 

The extent and efficiency of European cooperation with American trea- 
son, 219 

XXXIX. 

Bome and the Rebellion, ......•* 225 

XL. 

Rome and the Rebellion — France, Austria, and England at a game in 
Mexico, 241 

XLI. 
General Resume, . 247 

XLII. 

Sketch of events initiating the revolt, . . • • • « 251 

XLIII. 

Separation of the despotic from the democratic elements in the long- 
dominant party — Conditions of peace, . . ^ . . 258 

XLIV. 

Conditions indispensable to peace, and progress toward their attainment, 264 



XIV CONTENTS. 



XLV. 



The state of the Southern masses — The demonstrated aim of their 
leaders — Inevitable results of separation, 270 

XLVI. 

Concluding reflections — The contemplated cost of the Eebellion — The 
aim this cost was fitted to subserve — Kight-minded men at fault — 
The no-punishment class — Abuse of the term democratic— Disjomt- 
ing the Southern masses from their despotic leaders, . . . 275 

XLVII. 

Concluding rejections — The democrat and despot diverse — Grades of 
despotism — Developments of — Democracy spontaneous in its spread— 
If it develops in the South, its triumph universal — Contrast of admin- 
istrations — Delinquency of the old whig statesmen — Final success, . 290 



Appendix A, 305 

Appendix B, 306 

Appendix C, . 307 

Appendix D, 311 

Appendix E, 312 

Appendix F, 314 

Appendix G 325 



INTRODUCTION. 



A KixG of ancient Babylon, during a recess in the 
expeditions of his conquering armies, and with the known 
world almost entirely subjected to his sway, was meditat- 
ing on the perpetuity of his dynasty, and disposed to 
ask, "What should be thereafter? " This inquiring dispo- 
sition of the king, the God of Heaven was pleased to 
gratify. 

Language is always changing to adapt itself to the 
events, the minds, and modes of thought pecuUar to each 
varying age. Hence it is always lame in describing future 
events. And as the matter to be communicated was of 
importance to those who should live by several thousand 
years remote from the peculiarities of the then current 
age, an allegorical image was presented in a dream, to 
convey the desired intelligence. "Its brightness was 
excellent, and the form thereof terrible. Its head was of 
fine gold ; its chest and arms of silver ; its belly and 
thighs of brass ; its legs of iron ; and its feet part of iron 
and part of clay. A stone was cut out without hands, 
which smote the image on its feet, and brake them to 
pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, 
and the gold, broken in pieces together, and became like 
the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, and the wind 
carried them away that no place was found for them ; and 
the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, 
and filled the whole earth." 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

A faithful propliet of God was near, who explained the 
head of gold to represent the king's own Babylonish 
empire ; the chest and arms of silver to represent the 
Medo-Persian empire, which succeeded it ; the next section 
of brass to represent the Macedonian empire which suc- 
ceeded the Medo-Persian ; and the legs of iron he inter- 
preted to represent the base military strength of the 
Roman empire. Thus we have presented the whole of 
historic monarchy, practically complete, and left standing 
on its conglomerate feet and toes, which appear to repre- 
sent the modern kingdoms of Europe and Western Asia, 
into which the dual Roman empire dwindled down ; 
when, suddenly, a principle, antagonistic to all monarchy, 
developed itself without human design or shaping, smote 
the hoary structure on its feet, and the whole historic 
embodiment crumbled, became contemptible, and passed 
practically out of existence. 

While monarchy remains anywhere extant and domi- 
nant, those ancient empires, though long since passed 
from the plane of physical existence, still stand, to uphold 
the prestige of their kind, and send a powerful sanction 
from the distant past, and a moulding influence, to fashion 
and sustain the latest and feeblest of their degenerate 
progeny. But when the impinging force of a developed 
form and principle, hostile to all monarchy, breaks in 
23ieces the only remaining representatives of that kind of 
government, then, not only the conglomerate residuum 
impinged upon, but the ancient and perfect, and yet influ- 
ential specimens of the order may with propriety be said 
to break and crumble together ; and, as a class and kind 
of government, to become powerless and contemptible as 
chaft* while their newly-developed antagonist enlarges, to 
fill their place. This antagonist can be no other than our 
American self-government ; and dates and numbers accom- 



INTRODUCTION. XVII 

panying the prophetic declaration of its universal spread, 
as well as the marked character of recent national 
changes in every part of the world, point to about the 
present century as the time of its gradual establishment 
and spread.* 

Though the above views of prophecy suggest the 
arrangement of the matter which the following pnges 
contain, it is only the historic verity of what is here taken 
into view that is relied on in support of any of the con- 
clusions thouo^ht to be maintained. 



* See Lectures on Projyheqj, by George Junkin, D. D. Carter. Phila- 
delpliia : 1844. To these Lectures the writer listened while an undergrad- 
uate of ]\Iiami University, over which uastitution Dr. Junkin at that tkne 
presided. 

2* 



NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT SUCCEEDING MONARCHY — THE GREAT- 
NESS AND DIFFICULTY OF THE CHANGE — BASIS OF EACH 
— SKETCH OF THE LATTER — TERMS DEFINED — ANTAGO- 
NISM OF THE TWO — A CONTINENT DIVINELY RESERVED FOR 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREE GOVERNMENT. 

The greatest secular event of this or of any 
other age, is the transfer of the reins of civil 
power to the many, from the few. 

Among the strangest capabiHties and habits 
of man — the most versatile of created beings — 
is the capability and habit of submitting to the 
dictation of his fellow-man. This forms the only 
foundation on which monarchy can rise or rest. 
When and wherever this ceases to exist, then 
and there — and then and there only — will mon- 
archy or despotic civil authority be known no 
more. 

Among the great facts of human history, 
nothing that was destined to decline ever dis- 
played more of vastness and perpetuity than 

19 



20 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

civil monarchy. From the days of Nimrod down 
to the year of grace, 1776, hardly anything 
appeared to intimate that division into the two 
hitherto inevitable classes — slave and master, 
subject and sovereign — was not the normal and 
necessary condition of the race. Crowned with 
the Babylonish empire as its "head of gold," 
monarchy, through successive ages of universal 
prevalence, had wTought itself into an august 
embodiment that promised to absorb within it- 
self all that remained of human history. The 
antagonistic civil principle had not yet germi- 
nated. The " little stone " that was to " become 
a great mountain, and fill the earth" instead, had 
not yet been "cut out without hands.* And yet 
there was a progressive degeneracy in that which 
constituted the peculiar richness and excellence 
of monarchical power. Through the Medo-Per- 
sian and Macedonian ages, this degeneration pro- 
gressed, until the iron despotism of the Eoman 
empire, and its representatives and successors, 
the modern kingdoms of Europe and western 
Asia, displayed the once glorious and beneficent 
principle of civil monarchy in forms of baseness 
and cruelty unsurpassed by anything outside the 
confines of the darkest barbarism. 



* The reference here is to the prophet Daniel, who is interpreted as say- 
ing that monarchical government must become extinct at about the present 
age of the woiid. 



MONARCHY AND DEMOCRACY. 21 

Perhaps the basis of monarchical strength — 
the capability and easy habit of submitting to 
dictation — had been gradually ebbing out of 
the popular masses, thus necessitating the as- 
sumption of harshness and violence on the part 
of the ruling few, in order to save their inherited 
or usurped preeminence from falling into hope- 
less desuetude. 

The word monarchy, when strictly defined, 
describes the condition of affliirs in which one 
man presides in supreme civil power over the 
state or nation. In common usage, the word is 
understood to apply to all those modifications of 
the one-man-power which fall short of democ- 
racy. In democracy the majority rule. The 
word despotism describes an intense, abused 
form of monarchy. 

As monarchy is founded on nothing but the 
ability and habit of the people to submit to the 
dictation of superiors, so democracy is founded 
on nothing but the opposite of this, namely, the 
permanent inabihty of the people to submit to 
the dictation of any but themselves. 

These two plans or principles of government 
are intensely antagonistic: so much so, that 
wherever they exist together, annihilating war 
is inevitable, in one form or another, until the 
one principle or the other is extirpated. 



22 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 

Such being the state of the case, and mon- 
archy being ah^eady universal in the Old World, 
where should a place be found, whereon to de- 
velop the germ of free government ? This in- 
quiry would have been a serious, perhaps an 
unanswerable one, had not the wise and gracious 
Ruler of the universe, from the first founding of 
the world, reserved the American continent for 
this special purpose. 

As the age drew near in which monarchy was 
to become extinct, two great preparatory opera- 
tions were found to be going on. First, the con- 
tinent was being discovered, explored, and ren- 
dered accessible and habitable. Secondly, a race 
of men, the first of the nations, were being train- 
ed, separated, and at last transported thither, 
among whom the principle of popular self-gov- 
ernment was to be planted, developed, and 
strengthened into unconquerable prevalence. 



II. 

PREPARATION AND TRANSFER OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE TO 
INHABIT THE CONTINENT RESERVED FOR FREE GOVERN- 
MENT. 

While the continent that had been reserved 
for the bn^thplace of civil freedom was yet an 
undiscovered wilderness, roamed over only by a 
few tribes of feeble savages, the race of men 
that were to be its first fit occupants were being 
thus prepared. 

An island was selected in the temperate zone, 
best fitted for the development of mental, moral, 
and physical strength, remote alike from the 
stinting cold and poverty of the frigid, and from 
the sickening, passion-kindling, heat of torrid, 
latitudes ; sufficiently near the continent to 
admit the stimulating influence and intercourse 
of the European society of nations ; sufficiently 
isolated to remain largely uninfluenced by the 
degeneracy and turmoils of those nations. Here 
the aboriginal inhabitants were crossed by an 
admixture of the civilized and all-conquering 
Romans, and afterward successively by four 
other of the most stalwart races of middle and 

23 



24 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 

northern Europe. The result was, a people more 
vigorous and controlling than any contempora- 
neous nation of the earth. Their vigor dis- 
played itself in an early separation from the 
Romish Church, and a successful defiance of 
both its corruptions and its force. 

The despotism that prevailed oppressively 
over the rest of Christendom was soon broken 
and permanently modified in England by the 
turbulent exactions of the nobility. The " Magna 
Charta," exacted by his nobles from King John, 
is justly regarded as the first distinct germ of 
modern free government. 

This turbulent nobility at length destroyed 
itself in its intestine wars, and left the Commons 
— the elected representatives of the common 
people — to rise into an importance which they 
have never resigned, and which is as great, per- 
haps, as is compatible with the continued exist- 
ence of monarchy. 

From a people thus prepared and trained — a 
people of mental and moral stature, and national 
strength and resources second to none of its 
contemporaries — were selected the chosen few 
who were to plant the first permanent settle- 
ments on the continent that had been reserved 
to be the birthplace and heritage of popular 
government. Here they hardened under un- 



EARLY SETTLERS. 25 

wonted trials and privation, removed by a 
voyage of months from the efQcient presence of 
that government under whose ample protection, 
and from the enlightened community in whose 
affluent bosom, they had been reared. Exposed 
to the rigors of a trying climate, assaults of sav- 
ages, the ravages of disease, and in no slight 
degree to the perils of starvation, they gradually 
became aware of their ability to protect them- 
selves, and became insensibly possessed of a 
mysterious inability to submit to needless and 
unreasonable dictation. Gradually reinforced in 
numbers from the source from which the original 
settlers sprang, there resulted a homogeneous 
and unique national character, one great essen- 
tial of which was the yet latent but inexorable 
necessity of self-government. 



III. 

TWO PERMANENT SETTLEMENTS ON THIS CONTINENT — THE 
DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER PERTAINING TO THE PEOPLE 
OF EACH, AND THE NECESSARY RESULTS OF THIS DIFFER- 
ENCE. 

Two permanent settlements were made in 
North America at about the same period, and a 
few hundred miles apart. One at Plymouth, 
Massachusetts, by a religious community, brought 
out from its former home by the pressure of 
religious restrictions, to find more perfect reli- 
gious freedom. The other at Jamestown, Vir- 
ginia, by a secular community, moved by the 
motives which ordinarily prompt to the colo- 
nizing of new countries, — a desire to promote 
national enlargement, and to better the condi- 
tion of the individuals concerned. Each colony 
drew to itself kindred material from the mother 
land, and spread. Other settlements, less dis- 
tinct in character, came to the intervening and 
adjacent space, amalgamated with either of the 
first two settlements, and the country, for hun- 
dreds of m.iles in every direction, became com- 
pactly filled. The originally secular community 

26 



THE TWO COLONIES. 27 

became more religious, and the originally reli- 
gious community gradually became substantially 
secular, until, to the eye of the common ob- 
server, no lineament of the original diversity 
of germ was discernible in the homogeneous 
product of the two primal settlements. Whether 
a century of amalgamated existence and united 
governmental activity has or has not eradicated 
oriorinal inconscruities of character from the off- 
spring of these separate germs, is a question 
that has been clothed with momentous impor- 
tance by the events of 1861-2. 

The orio-inal relioi:ious difference between the 
Northern and Southern colonies, though dimin- 
ished, has never become extinct. The activity 
of Northern minds still takes a religious turn. 
What there is among them of real faith in God 
and in his revealed Word assumes a more posi- 
tive, aggressive, and fruitful type than elsewhere ; 
and what there is among them of ungodliness 
and infidelity assumes, to a very remarkable 
extent, a sanctimonious aspect and a religious 
form. Whole denominations of churches keep 
up the costly rites and ceremonies of religious 
worship, merely to clothe themselves with the 
external decorum of believers, to give expres- 
sion and exercise to those religious faculties and 
feelings common to the race, to emphasize 



28 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

their rejection of revealed truth, and to retain 
their followers from being drawn under the 
dominion of an evangelical faith. While in the 
South, real religion is more silent and retiring, 
and ungodliness prides itself on the frank and 
open bearing of the undisguisedly profligate. 

Diversity of climate and other accidents have 
induced more or less difference of character and 
habit between the descendants of the Northern 
and Southern colonists, in addition to any diver- 
sity that originally marked their ancestors. All 
these, with the original and continued religious 
difference that existed and still exists, may serve 
to induce diversity of social tastes, and even a 
degree of antipathy between the dwellers in 
the Northern and Southern portions of the 
Union ; but all this sinks into utter non-impor- 
tance in the presence of the one great charac- 
teristic feature of the age. Despotism and 
Democracy have for years been mustering their 
adherents for deadly and final conflict ; and by 
the all-absorbing power and importance of this 
struggle, where it is present, any other shade or 
ground of difference between two civil commu- 
nities is merged at once in oblivious insignifi- 
cance. 

The question, then, whether, between the 
people of the Northern and Southern portions 



CONDITIONS OF UNION. 29 

of the Union there exists such radical divergence 
of character as necessitates the sundering of the 
civil ties that hitherto united them, becomes 
simply the question whether the people of these 
two sections have become arrayed on different 
sides in the great strife that is going on through- 
out the civilized world between the friends and 
the enemies of popular self-government. 

If both are on the same side in this one great, 
all-important, all-absorbing, conflict of the age, 
then any present or partial difference that may 
separate them on minor points will of necessity 
soon subside and disappear, and leave them 
naturally and substantially united. If, on the 
contrary, the people of these two sections are 
fairly and permanently fixed on different sides 
in the great conflict of the age, then, no act of 
separation, no peace-treaty or covenant, no guar- 
anty or mediation, can prevent their warring 
with deadly animosity, until one or the other 
party to the strife is converted or consumed. 

3» 



lY. 

CLAIM OF THE NORTH TO BEING CONSIDERED DEMOCRATIC — 
ITS VALIDITY AND LIMIT. 

With regard to the position of the Northern 
States, on the great question of the day, there 
is, and can be no difference of opinion. If their 
own profession, and the admission of all foreign 
nations, that they are the peculiar possessors, 
advocates, and champions, of free government, 
were not satisfactory proof on this point, their pe- 
culiar follies and weaknesses, as displayed in the 
conduct of the present war, their apparent 
utter inability to have a governing policy, or an 
efficient head, should establish beyond a cavil 
that they are anything else but monarchists. 

The fact of the Northern States having abolished 
slavery within their borders is some proof of the 
depth and genuineness of their professed democ- 
racy, inasmuch as the causes which induced this 
line of action, and the action itself, would have 
tended somewhat strongly to induce and to con- 
firm the democratic element. The fact that the 
people of the Northern States have never exacted 
from their several States, nor from the general 

30 



LDHTS OF NOETHEEX FREEDOM. 31 

government, distinct admission of the citizenship 
of their colored population, limits, though per- 
haps it does not go far to countervail, the depth 
and sincerity of their claims to being considered 
democratic. 

A still more serious limit to the genuineness 
of these claims is found in the history of the 
tam^e submissiveness with which the people and 
statesmen of the North, have almost unresistingly 
accorded a vast predominance of political influ- 
ence to the Southern minority in the national 
councils.* This is an error, not of design, but 
of unconscious feebleness in what forms the 
basis of all reliable self-government, — an mabil- 
ity to submit to dictation. 

Perhaps, on the other hand, some allowance is 
justly to be made on account of the unorganized, 
unsuspecting nature of all democratic communi- 
ties. Only in the presence of a recognized 



* Out of the seventy-two years of the existence of our government from 
its oi-ganization to the close of Buchanan's administration, Southern men 
have held the seat of chief executive forty-eight years —just two-thirds 
of the time. Add to this, that Pierce and Buchanan, two of the Northern 
Presidents were notoriously mere tools of the South, and owe their elections 
to that fact, which the history of their administrations never contradicted,— 
then allow that all oflfices of emolument and trust under the general gov- 
ernment, domestic and foreign, civil, military, and naval, have been distrib- 
uted to Southerners in approximately the same ratio in which they have 
held the post of chief executive, — and the result will be a somewhat seri- 
ous drawback on the validity of the profession of Northerners to being a 
democratic people. 



32 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

antagonist is there an3rthing to inspire them 
with suspicion, to force on them that organiza- 
tion, or train them to that reconnoitring alert- 
ness, from which they naturally lapse in time of 
peace, and without which they are defenceless 
as sheep. 

A monarchical government so readily assumes 
the attitude and armament of war that war may 
almost be said to be its normal state. Its single 
or naturally united head, always necessarily 
vigilant, and alert to maintain its own preemi- 
nence in its own community, lundergoes but 
trifling change of state or activity when it turns 
its attention to foes without, or taxes the resour- 
ces of its realm to resist invasion or to become 
itself the invader. 

On the other hand, in the democratic com- 
munity, the law that reduces all preeminence to 
the common level — the practical efiiciency of 
which law is the first condition of democracy — 
neutralizes the intelligence and paralyzes the 
activity of any one who might be able to warn 
of danger, or to direct efforts to forestall disaster, 
until such time as the constant aggravation of 
prolonged oppression, or some sudden violation- 
of every sense of justice, rouses the universal 
populace with one common purpose to resist. 



LIMITS OF NOEIHEEN FREEDOM. 33 

This natural disposition and tendency of a 
democratic community to be remiss and ineffi- 
cient in preserving its rightS; and resisting aggres- 
sion, will account in part for the undue ascend- 
ency of Southern influence in our national coun- 
cils^ but it will not wholly account for or excuse 
this. The historic fact that such notoriously 
imbecile tools as Frank Pierce and James 
Buchanan had strong, organized, and in some 
instances ruling, parties in the North to advocate 
their election and to sustain their administra- 
tions, — is a fact that admits of explanation only 
on the admission that said parties had become 
depraved to a great extent of the first essential 
of democracy, — an inability to submit to usurped 
dictation. 

To extenuate their conduct, it may be said 
that many of the men who voted to raise these 
two men to the chief magistracy did so without 
understanding the import of their deeds. They 
were practised on by party deceptions; they 
had been drilled for years to blind submission to 
party leaders ! As much as this can be said in 
defence of the most grovelling set of slaves that 
ever fixed upon themselves the shackles of a 
despot. 

The simple truth is, that with more light and 



34 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

knowledge than ever before illuminated the path 
of a people similarly situated, they did what in 
them lay, to sell themselves and their country 
into the hands of as fierce a set of tyrants as 
ever endeavored to usurp the rights of a people 
they had purposed to enslave. 



CLAIMS OF THE SOUTH TO BEING COXSIDERET) DEMOCRATIC 
EXAMINED, AND FOUND TO HAVE BEEN SINCERE AT FIRST, 
BUT NOW FALSE IN THE EXTREME. 

The people of the Southern States profess also 
to advocate, possess, and exemplify the principles 
of popular self-government. And it is only by 
separating what is fact from what is fiction, in 
this profession, that we can arrive at any reliable 
conclusion respecting the moving spring of their 
rebelHon, or the means of bringing our existing 
war to a successful close. 

That the people of the Southern States, with 
comparatively few individual exceptions, sincere- 
ly believe themselves to be democratic members 
of a democratic community, there can be no 
doubt. 

But the question before us is not a question 
as to what the Southern people believe or sup- 
pose themselves to be, or what they are believed 
or supposed to be by others. It is a question of 
fact, whether they are or are not capable of them- 
selves exercising or submitting to the exercise 
by others, of despotic dictation in civil afiairs. 

35 



36 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

Let the answer to this inqmry be reliably ascer- 
tained, and in that answer, and in that only, we 
have the data for framing a policy which will 
bring our present grievous intestine war to a 
successful issue. 

The history of the Southern people, at first 
view, appears to justify the conclusion that their 
profession of democratic principles is sincere. 
Originating from the same national stock, trans- 
ported at about the same period across the same 
almost interminable ocean (as then navigated), 
and subjected to the same perils of starvation 
and savage hostilities, there is nothing wanting 
but the same severity of climate and poverty of 
soil, to complete in all essentials the historic 
parallel between the early experience of the 
Northern and Southern colonies. Each appears 
to have had substantially the same experience 
and training, leading and impelling them to re- 
sist the dictatorial exercise of power by the 
mother country; and with substantially the 
same result. The end of a century and a half 
of colonial existence found the accumulated col- 
onies of the North, under the lead of Massachu- 
setts, and of the South, under Virginia, alike 
prompt and desirous to inaugurate and carry on 
the war of independence, and alike worthy to 
share the benefits that war obtained. 



SOUTHERN SEXTIMEXT IN 1776. 37 

Such a test as the war of the Revolution sup- 
pUed, could not fail to develop any deficiency of 
the elements of freedom, had any such defi- 
ciency existed at that time. Since then, the 
trade of politicians has been plied in every quar- 
ter of the land so thoroughly, so perpetually and 
persistently, that any movement of the people 
or of any portion of them, requires to be re- 
viewed and repeated for some length of time, 
before it is safe to consider it as spontaneous or 
sincere, and not artificial and produced by dem- 
agogues. But at the time of the Revolution 
and before, whatever the people did was reason- 
ably sure to have been done sincerely and of their 
own simple motion. There were tories North 
and South \ individuals, and sometimes large 
neighborhood majorities, who preferred monar- 
chy, or, at least, preferred the old British govern- 
ment, to anything which they thought likely to 
be achieved by revolution ; and they showed this 
p)reference by active cooperation with the Brit- 
ish, or by very obstinate neutrality. There ap- 
pears to have been more of tJiese in the extreme 
South, than in any other section. A more ener- 
vating climate, less advantages of education, and 
of enlarged intercourse, and a more natural in- 
difference as to what government they were un- 
der, may account for this. While the splei^did 



38 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

specimens of ability and devotion to Freedom's 
cause, Tvhicli -svere at the same time displayed in 
the same section, largely offset the other, and 
almost dispel any suspicion that the Southern 
colonies, as a section, were behind the North in 
their demand for national freedom, or in their 
contributions for its procurement. 

The influence which the Revolutionary strug- 
gle, with its sacrifices and privations, must have 
had on those who engaged in it, could not have 
been other than to deepen and confirm their 
preference for the cause they espoused, even 
if that preference had been at first waver- 
insr. And the results of the orlorious achieve- 
ments of that war — the sense of triumph, and 
the rapid rise of national character and wealth 
— must have overwhelmed the craven spirit of 
torj-ism that at first persisted in its preference 
for British monarchy as its government. Such, 
we may well believe, was indeed the case. Pref- 
erences for monarchical government disappeared. 
And up to a recent period, almost no one has 
had the hardihood to avow a preference for any 
form of government other than the one we have- 
had. So perfectly and so splendidly has the 
upward progress of our nation exemplified and 
illustrated the benefits of free government, that 
evidence amounting almost to proof of hatred 



THE REBELS EXEillES OF FREE GOYERXMEXT. 39 

to all democracy in the authors of this rebellion, 
is found in the fact that they have purpo>-sd, and 
are laboring to achieve, the overthrow of this 
first successful specimen of popular self-govern- 
ment. This government is universallj^ admitted 
to be the representative and almost the embodi- 
ment of all modern free government, and those 
who are engaged in an assassin struggle for its 
overthrow are a monstrous anomaly in the world 
of sequence, if they are not the representatives and 
cham|)ions of the tottering monarchies of a ty- 
rant-ridden world. The gauzy pretence that they 
are laboring to establish a more perfect form of 
free government, is but an extorted compliment 
to the admitted worth and splendor of the one 
they are laboring to destroy. Nothing else but 
such pretence could shield them from the open 
shame of being the common enemies of man- 
kind. 



VI. 

CAUSE OF THE SOUTHERN LAPSE FROM DEMOCRACY BACK TO 
DESPOTISM — IMPERFECT LIGHT WITH WHICH THE NATIONAL 
CONSTITUTION WAS ADOPTED. 

Unquestioned and unquestionable is the his- 
toric record, that, from Washington and Jeffer- 
son, down to Marion and Sumter, the Southern 
colonies supplied many of the bravest warriors 
of the Revolution, many of the ablest and most 
devoted of the framers of our present govern- 
ment. Equally certain is it, that the ablest 
minds of the South, one and all, with sparse 
exceptions, are now laboring with infuriate zeal 
to dissipate what the valor of their fathers won, 
to pull down what the wisdom and devotion of 
their fathers reared. 

This change, that has occurred between the 
fathers and their sons, demands to be accounted 
for. 

To attribute such a change to caprice, or to 
political accidents, one or many, without the 
intervention of the sternest laws, and the deepest 
principles that influence and govern national 
character and conduct, would be to abandon all 

40 



THE SOUTHERN LAPSE. 41 

idea of cause and effect in the sphere of man's 
associate action, and to convert the moral world 
into a moral chaos, wherein all law is nugatory 
and reason useless. 

That the parties undergoing it should be 
themselves intelligently cognizant of the change, 
is not to be expected. It is too deep and radical, 
its occurrence has been too gradual and silent, 
it is too total, extensive, and absorbing, to be 
intelligently comprehended by those who are 
the subjects of it. It is £he greatest and most 
mysterious change that human character can 
undergo, next to that change of which the 
Scriptures say, " as the wind bloweth where it 
listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but 
canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it 
goeth, so is every one that experiences it." It 
is the change from democracy to despotism; 
or rather the lapse consequent on the conver- 
sion from despotism to democracy having been 
in the first instance imperfect. 

When the war of the Revolution was over, 
and the convention which formed our Constitu- 
tion had assembled, jarring and repellent inter- 
ests well-nigh rendered their labors finally abor- 
tive. 

This was to be expected. Only the heavy 
4» 



42 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

costs of freedom had as yet been proved. The 
rich fruits of its possession were still conjectu- 
ral ; and union, as indispensable alike to their 
procurement or preservation, had not then, as 
now, become matter of manifold experience. 
Sectional interests and even local prejudices 
were sufQcient to jar, and even repel, the parts 
that had not then been formally united, nor 
welded into one, by three-fourths of a century 
of happy and glorious experience. 

No fundamental ground of diversity in prin- 
ciples or practice then displayed itself Even 
the question of slavery was far from being local 
at the South. Though the States were all, or 
nearly all, slave-holding, the predominance of 
interest in that institution was at the South. 
Yet the South was far from bein«: unanimous in 
favor of slavery ; and the North was nearly as 
far from being unanimous against it. The lead- 
ing statesmen of the age, from the South as well 
as from the North — themselves slave-holders — 
were against perpetuating the institution. They 
had successfully perilled their lives, their posses- 
sions, and their hopes, to obtain for themselves, 
their posterity, and their country, the boon of 
civil freedom ; and they were then engaged in 
the extremely arduous and critical work of giv- 
ing security and permanence to what their perils, 



DEFICIENCY OF LIGHT IN 1787. 43 

privation, blood, and toil, had gained. They 
were deeply conscious of the incongruity of 
making the perilous and costly consummation 
of the freedom of one race the occasion of riv- 
eting irrevocably the fetters of another race, 
intermingled among them on the same soil. 
But the peril of such a course they did not 
understand. The latent, inevitable, consuming, 
hostility between despotism and free govern- 
ment, had not, at that early stage of the conflict 
between these two great principles, been suffi- 
ciently demonstrated to be understood. They 
dreaded only the usurpations of those w^ho were 
despotically disposed ; and had no dread of the 
broader, deeper, and more surely prolific ground 
of despotism, — the subservient disposition of the 
masses. That the existence of slaves necessi- 
tates the existence of masters, and that masters 
are necessarily tyrants, despots, are truths, obvi- 
ous enough to us, but which they appear not 
distinctly to have discovered. The war they 
had just gone through was looked on as not ge- 
jierically diverse from former wars, and not as the 
initiatory engagement in a series of conflicts, 
the most fierce, perhaps, that the world's history 
will ever have recorded, which are to terminate 
in the utter subversion of all monarchy. 

It was left for us, their descendants, at this 



44 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

remoter period, by the^light which the history 
of their day throws forward upon ours, and in 
the light which ours and intervening years 
throw back on theirs, to discover the truth that 
they and we are taking part in the downfall of 
universal despotism, the greatest revolution that 
civil society ever has been, or will be, called to 
pass through; that they and we are fighting 
out issues, not for ourselves alone, but for the 
human Tace, — issues not again to be reversed 
till the end of time. 

Had the patriot framers of the Constitution 
of our country's government been permitted to 
see and realize the magnitude and extent of 
the change they were inaugurating in the world's 
histor}^ ; had they obtained a glimpse of the 
inevitable certainty and consuming bitterness of 
the wars which they had begun, and which were 
to rage at intervals until the last of monarchical 
institutions shall have become extinct, sooner 
than do as they did, — plant the seeds of inevi- 
table, intestine, consuming war in the bowels of 
the sacred structure they were rearing up to be 
consecrated to universal Freedom, — such colony 
or colonies as refused to pledge themselves to 
final emancipation would have been left outside 
the Union, till the bitter fruits of their fatal 
choice had ripened in destruction on their own 
unpitied heads. 



VII. 

VIEWS WITH WHICH THE CONSTITUTION WAS ADOPTED — 
WHAT THAT INSTRUMENT DID, AND WHAT IT DID NOT 
DO FOR SLAVERY. 

ILvD the States which persisted in making Af- 
rican slavery perpetual been excluded from the 
original Union, would the Free United States 
have prospered as they have done in the union 
of all the States ? The history of the Free States 
does not admit the shadow of a doubt, that, 
without any union with, or assistance from, the 
Slave States, their prosperity would have been 
great and their advancement irresistible. Their 
climax of greatness might, perhaps, at no time 
prior to the present, have reached the point at 
which it stood when this war began ; but there 
can be no doubt that it would have reached the 
condition in which it will be found when this 
w^ar shall close. 

The Southern or slave-holding States, on the 
other hand, would have been early won, to join 
the prosperous Free States, and abandon slavery, 
or else they would have become monarchical in 
form as rapidly as they became so in fact -, would 

45 



46 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

have become confederate with European mon- 
archies ; and their present war on freedom, would 
have taken place ten or twenty years earlier 
than it has, and before the Slave States attained 
a tithe of their present power for mischief The 
war, in that case, might have been less deci- 
sive, more protracted, or repeated at intervals, 
more than now, but during its course, whether 
long or short, there could hardly have been as 
much lying as has been done in Europe and in 
the Slave States during each ten days since the 
rebellion commenced. 

But the truth of the case is, that the patriot 
founders of our government never believed that 
African slavery, though extant, would become 
perpetual. They were themselves possessed of 
a love of liberty that outweighed all other con- 
siderations. They knew the same sentiment to 
pervade their countrymen. North and South. 
They knew that the terrible costs of the war 
had not only proved the existence and preva- 
lence of this sentiment, but had developed, deep- 
ened, and increased the same. They saw with 
sanguine faith something of the rich prosperity 
that awaited the future of the United States ; 
and they not unreasonably calculated that this 
would confirm the love of freedom in every sec- 



THE CONSTITUTION AND SLAVERY. 47 

tion of the land. And they saw no good reason 
to doubt that the evident incongruity of a love 
of being free one's self, and the love of enslav- 
ing another — the warring diifference there was 
between the sentiment and the practice of se- 
curing the widest liberty to the white, while 
imposing the heaviest servitude on the black — 
would, at no distant day, while yet the love of 
freedom in the citizens was unshaken, eventuate 
in the enfranchisement of the slaves. 

They secured the extinguislimeni of the foreign 
slave-trade, ^vA permitted the domestic slave-trade 
to have a free field. They allowed a representa- 
tion in Congress to the masters on account of 
slaves, and secured the return of the fugitives. 
These things they did as a fit and customary 
compromise of jarring interests, and left the in- 
evitable opposition between slavery and freedom 
to work out the rest ; desiring and believing that 
the result would be, the ultimate glorious tri- 
umph of the latter. Their expectations are not 
to be disappointed. But the long delay and 
the bloody vale of humiliation, which were to 
intervene between the inception and the accom- 
plishment of their hopes, they did not fore- 
see. The causes of this partial disappointment 
of their expectations, it is worthy of our most 
earnest and patient endeavors to understand. 



Till. 

THE CONSTITUTION ADOPTED — SLAVERY ABOLISHED IN THE 
NORTHERN STATES — FROM WHAT INFLUENCES, AND WITH 
WHAT RESULTS. 

The Constitution^, formed by the Convention 
for that purpose met in Philadelphia, through 
much difficulty, peril, prayer, and patience, was 
at length completed. More or less tardily each 
of the thirteen then existing States gave in its 
adherence thereto, and on the thirtieth of April, 
1789, it went into operation by the assembling 
of Congress and the induction of George Wash- 
ington into office as the first President. From 
this date commenced the progress of the United 
States in a career of affluence, expansion, re- 
spectability, and power, unparalleled and unap- 
proached in the history of nations,^'' and un- 
checked, until it was confronted with the prod- 
uct of those seeds of conflict and of dissolution 
which were planted in the Constitution when 

* It seems to be only with some qnalification that the term nation can be 
applied to a conglomerate like that which fills the boundaries of our land — 
a type of population like the gathered nationalities of former universal 
monarchies, which seems of itself to presage the universal spread of the 
government they sustain. 

48 



NORTHERN STATES ABOLISH SLAVERY. 49 

its protections of African Slavery were per- 
mitted to remain perpetual. 

Six of the northernmost of the original thir- 
teen States shed off the incubus of negro sla- 
very without commotion and without regret. 

This result was favored by the accident of 
climate, and perhaps of soil. Negroes are con- 
stitutionally adapted to a warm climate. They 
seem almost incapable of being hardened to a 
cold climate like the white races. Hence they 
did not thrive so spontaneously, they did not 
multiply as rapidly, as in tjie Southern States ; 
it cost more to keep them, and they were 
worth less when kept. Again, the bracing cli- 
mate stimulated both the mental and bodily 
powers of the Vvdiite race into greater activit}^, 
so thiit there was less demand for slave labor. 
The fast-growing spirit of freedom and equality 
soon produced a social atmosphere in which the 
individual, if personally otherw^ise inclined, be- 
came deeply ashamed to accept his sustenance 
or wealth at the hands of an unrequited, half- 
civilized, halfstarved darky. The negro him- 
self became stimulated, if not by the climate, by 
his Liro:e and constant intercourse with intelli- 
gent, ingenious, and self supporting whites, and 
rapidly and obviously became fit for freedom. 

The soil in the Northern States is not suffi- 



50 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

ciently productive to admit of the constant 
production of one great staple crop, to be sold 
off for cash ; and all experience proves that in 
no other circumstances is slave labor profitable. 
Nothing but the iwtent stimulus of personal in- 
terest will so far overcome the latent inertia of 
human powers as to induce a man to apply him- 
self successfully amidst a variety of domestic or 
agricultural pursuits. Under a relaxing climate, 
authority may avail to impel the slave along in 
the deep-worn channel of routine, in the simple 
production of cotton, rice, sugar, or tobacco. 
But if provisions and teams are also to be raised 
as well as the staple crop, the white man will 
find it about as cheap to do his work himself, or 
to pay some one who will be concerned to save 
his varied interests from harm.* If no great 
staple is to be produced at all, if, as is the case 
almost throughout the Northern States, affluence 
is to spring from the application of skill, indus- 
try, and economy, to the multifarious vocations 
of a sterile country, slave labor soon proves 
itself to be a costlj^ nuisance. 

Slavery having been finally and effectually 
abolished in the six northernmost of the original 
States, and being excluded from the northern- 

* See Appendix A at close of volume. 



FRUITS OF AMPLE FREEDOM NORTH. 51 

most of the new States which, from time to time, 
were admitted to the Union, nothing was left 
in these States to hmit or retard the maturing 
to perfection of the sentiments and principles 
of free government. " For better for worse," 
whatever these principles and sentiments lead 
to was destined here to be witnessed and expe- 
rienced to its full extent. 

Accordingly we see the Northern States pre- 
eminent in the increase and general diffusion of 
wealth and learning ; the shipping and manu- 
factures of the country fell almost entirely into 
their hands, and so well were they handled that 
history presents no parallel results. Immigra- 
tion fell so exclusively to the North, that, in 
1860, the Northern States possessed two-thirds 
of the white population of the whole country. 
The peculiar work of democratic principles — the 
leveling down of individual preeminence — had 
at this date been so effectually performed that 
not only had the Southern oligarchy held con- 
trol of the general government, and used it for 
their own purposes for half a century, but when 
they now came to cast off the Northern States, 
robbed, insulted, and defied, and these were 
compelled to resort to arms for self-preservation, 
their armies were like sheep without a shepherd, 
and their legislature more so. With such a 



52 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

trembling grasp was power held by their exec- 
utive, that, at the end of sixteen months of war, 
it was not easy to show that they had not injured 
themselves by exhaustion, more than they had 
inflicted injury on their antagonists ; and Europe 
was still in doubt whether the South, with two 
men to her one against her in the field, with a 
still greater disparity against her in pecuniary 
resources and war-material, and without the 
shadow of a navy, against the best fleet in the 
world, was not destined to have things her own 
way, simply by virtue of efficient leadership. 



IX. 

CAUSES WHICH OPERATED AGAINST THE ABOLISHING OF 
SLAVERY IN THE SOUTH — AN ARISTOCRATIC CLASS AL- 
WAYS EXISTED THERE — CLIMATE MADE THE NEGROES 
THRIVE — FEW WHITES HAD THE INTELLIGENCE TO UN- 
DERSTAND, OR THE ENERGY TO ASSERT, THEIR RIGHTS. 

Prior to the adoption of the constitution we 
have seen that the Southern colonies were set- 
tled by a class of men, of character somewhat 
different from that of the settlers at the North, 
and for somewhat different purposes. Yet they 
struck for freedom at the Eevolution ; they 
contributed adequately to secure the prize, and 
shared on terms of equality in the distribution 
of its benefits. It is true that the contributions 
from the South toward the achievement of our 
independence, and the subsequent founding of 
our government, came more in the form of dis- 
tinguished leaders than of a reliable or abun- 
dant supply of men to fill the army ranks, or a 
strongly supporting sentiment of the common 
people. Yet up to the final adoption of the 
Constitution, and the organization of .the govern- 
ment under Washington, we find no ground to 

6* 53 



54- NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

justify the suspicion of a radical, even incipient, 
departure, on the part of the South, from the 
guidance of the principles of popular govern- 
ment. It is, then, to a period subsequent to the 
adoption of the Constitution, that we are to look 
for the inception, growth, and maturing of those 
principles w^hich have produced the present Re- 
bellion and intestine war. And the first promi- 
nent fact that strikes our attention in the search 
is, that whereas African slavery dwindled to 
extinction in the Northern States, it progressed 
uninterruptedly at the South. The causes and 
the consequences of this progress demand atten- 
tion, and the latter more than the former. But 
first the causes. 

It is noticeable that in the settlement of the 
Southern colonies, nobles, or prominent leaders 
figure extensively. The common people appear 
not at an early period to have manifested the 
same power and wdll to take care of themselves 
that from the first characterized the colonists of 
the North. In 1671, in a population of 40,000, 
Virginia numbered 2,000 slaves and 6,000 in- 
dentured white servants; and was presided over 
by a governor who prayed "that they might 
long remain free from the pernicious influence 
of free schools and the printing-press." 

The educating trials of colonial experience, 



OBSTACLES TO FREEDOM'S PROGRESS SOUTH. 55 

and the salutary discipline of the Eevolntionary 
War, doubtless went far to obliterate aristocratic 
distinctions, and to make the Southern commu- 
nity in reality what it professed to be, — self- 
governing by popular suflfrage. And yet, neither 
free schools nor colleges, or other schools not 
free, nor yet the printing-press, have ever pre- 
vailed at the South with more than a tithe of 
the influence they exerted at the North ; and 
society there has always, to the present time, 
exhibited strong tendencies to divide itself into 
dominant and subject classes. This tendency 
may have had ssome direct influence in limiting 
the extension and perfecting of the princij)les 
of free government, but it may also be regarded 
as one strong barrier to the spread of that spirit 
and practice of emancipation that swept the 
Northern States. 

The warm climate, adapted to the African 
constitution, made the negroes thrive, and pre- 
vented the institution of slavery from declining 
of its own accord. It also imparted to the 
master an indolence of disposition, averse to 
personal application, enterprise, and industry, 
and went far to reverse those characteristics of 
the Northern population, which made them scorn 
alike to become the subjects of another's mas- 



56 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

tership, or to accept their living at the hands of 
slaves over whom they happened to have the 
power to extort it. 

This indolence of disposition, on the part of 
the whites, goes far to account for the absence 
of free schools, and the almost entire absence 
of a Southern literature to the present day. 

The reason why slavery was not abandoned 
in the South at the time and under the pressure 
of the influence of free institutions for the 
whites, which abolished it at the North, is in 
no small degree to be found in the fact that the 
Southern white population lacked the enterprise 
to abolish it, even if the vast majority of them 
sincerely desired it to be abolished. The actual 
slave-owning part of the Southern white popu- 
lation never has been more than one in thirty. 
These hold five-thirtieths of the others, or five 
times their own number, identified in interest 
with themselves, by blood relationship and fam- 
ily alliance ; leaving four-fifths who not only 
have no interest in slavery, but whose every 
prospect, hope, and privilege, but that of vege- 
tating on a scanty subsistence, are blasted by its 
presence. 

The most prominent of all the causes which 
countervailed the abolishing of slavery in the 



SPIRITLESSNESS OF SOUTHERN MASSES. 57 

Southern as it was abolished in the Northern States, 
under the influence of free institutions estab- 
lished for the whites, is, that the non-dave-holding 
people of the South lacked the enterprise, intelligence, 
and daring to demand and exact their democratic 
rights ; but on the contrary they sat down su- 
pinely to the possession of naked existence, 
under a network of legislation and popular 
usage which their slave-holding oligarchy had 
framed for their subjugation. The same is a 
mot^t prominent cause, without the operation of 
which, the present nefarious Kebellion against 
the national government could not have existed 
two months. And without the subversion of 
which, this Eebellion can never be put down 
effectually.'^ 



* In allowing the majority of the people to be defrauded of the right of 
suffrage in the States that never did, and never could, carry a popular ma- 
jority in favor of Secession, — as in Virginia, Louisiana, and Tennessee, — 
and in then permitting these Union majorities to be forced by despotic mil- 
itary power into the armies an-ayed against a government which, if left to 
their choice, they would quite as soon have supported as opposed, the ad- 
ministration of President Lincoln appears to have shown deficiency of aim 
or an inefficiency of action which ought not to be charged to the account 
of the necessary weaknesses of democratic government. Perhaps a part of 
the "damnable inheritance" entailed on the present administration by its 
immediate predecessor, was the necessity of inaction in this regard ; but it 
appears to be exceedingly desirable to know, whether the constituent of a 
government on which he is dependent for protection abroad, is or is not 
entitled to aid from the general executive, when he finds himself in an 
emergency like that in which these Union majorities were placed. If tlie 
only protection to which these Union men were entitled, was to be found in 
the decisive energy of their own strong arms, under the lead of such men 



58 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

as could be found in their own number, it might facilitate business very 
much to have this fact clearly understood, before another such emergency 
shall arise. 

Perhaps no demonstration could be more conclusive that these majorities 
had become perfectly conformed to the character and condition of the ab- 
ject many in a despotism than the fact that they allowed — as in Virginia, 
for instance — the tyrant few, calling to their aid what negro-traders, gam- 
blers and other desperadoes could be collected, to defeat, put down, and im- 
molate, the masses of the community. 



X. 

CAUSES OF THE NON-ABOLISHMENT OF SLAVERY LN" THE 
SOUTHERN STATES CONTINUED — THE ENERVATION OF 
THE WHITES — THE RICHNESS OF SOIL — THE GREAT NUM- 
BER OF NEGROES — THE POOR WHITES ACQUIRE A LOVE 
OF IDLENESS — THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE NEGRQES 
DEGRADES AND DESPOTIZES THE WHOLE WHITE COMMU- 
NITY. 

Not only did the inertness of character pro- 
duced by the climate of the Southern States act 
by deterring the great non-slave-holding majority 
of white citizens in those States from asserting 
their rights and enforcing what their interests 
dictated, in respect to the abolishment of slav- 
ery, but the same lack of enterprise also de- 
terred many and many a master from ever acting 
out his own hearty wish to leave his posterity 
free from the obvious curse. 

Such was the radical working of the despotic 
principles in the whole framew^ork of society, 
that it presently became a matter of very great 
difficulty for a slave to be set free, or for a mas- 
ter to abrogate the onerous prerogatives of own- 
ership. 

The fertility of the soil, by enabling the coun- 



59 



60 ' NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

try, for a long time, to bear the embarrening 
influence of the thriftless institution, contributed 
far to postpone the day of necessary emancipa- 
tion. 

The number of negroes in the Southern States 
being much larger than in the Northern, as it 
was difficult, if not impracticable, to remove them, 
the apprehended inconvenience of having so 
large a number of persons of little intelligence 
or principle, and unused to exercise the rights of 
freemen, let loose upon a civilized community, 
operated adversely to emancipation. Perhaps 
they might have been exported, but the expense 
and difficulties of the work would have been im- 
mense ; their labor was needed. The poor whites 
soon came to prefer poverty and idleness to in- 
dustry and thrift, and the presence of the slave- 
system so effectually turned away the immigra- 
tion of foreign laborers that no one thought of 
obtaining a supply of labor from that source. 

But among all the causes that contributed to 
withstand the progress of free principles at the 
South, and to prevent the spread there of that 
perfect spirit of freedom which cleared the North 
of slaves, perhaps the most prominent and effect- 
ual was the direct influence of so large a pro- 
portion of half-barbarous Africans interspersed 
among them, in forming the character, principles, 



SLAVES MOULDING THEIR MASTERS. 61 

and habits^ of the members of the white com- 
miuiity. 

It has been before remarked that in these 
pages we are dealing, not so much with what 
men suppose themselves to be, or with what 
they intelligently purpose to do, as we are with 
what men are^ from the necessities of the situa- 
tion in which their ancestors placed them, and 
in which they consent to remain ; and with what 
they do^ as a necessary sequence of what they 
are. 

For the " high-born," labor-scorning aristocrat 
of the South to suppose or to admit that there 
is anything African in the composition of his 
character, is not to be expected. And yet, that 
sparsely-settled white flimilies, who, of their own 
free-will and choice, abide in the midst of col- 
lected Africans, often have their infants nursed 
from the breasts of African women, grow up in 
the companionship of African playmates, pass 
their early and their later years perpetually 
leaning on African attendants, are perpetually 
tempted, and not seldom effectually tempted, to 
indulge in African recreations ; supported in af- 
jfluence on the proceeds of African labor, from 
youth to age perpetually familiar with the tones 
of African voices, and conversant with the work- 
ings of African minds, and exalted to what 



62 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

themselves suppose and esteem to be the high- 
est pinnacles of social and political eminence, by 
nothing but the upholding of African subordi- 
nates, — to be, to do, and to suffer all this from 
generation to generation, and come off at the 
end uncontaminated with any considerable traits 
of African character, is simply impossible. " Evil 
communications corrupt good manners." Two 
individuals of different grades of moral elevation 
and improvement can hardly be brought in con- 
tact, to any considerable extent, without each 
participating, to some extent, in the character of 
the other. Two masses of population, of differ- 
ent grades of civilization, can never be continu- 
ously interspersed, as are the w^hites and blacks 
in one of the Slave States, and avoid the effi- 
cient action of that natural law which tends to 
bring both to a common, medium level. The 
more degraded will be elevated ; the more ele- 
vated will be brought down. 

Many traits of character which have been" thus 
imparted to the white from the colored race, by 
long and familiar intercommunication in the 
Slave States, it would be invidious to specify. 
But one of these, if possible, more prominent 
and more important than any other, it is neces- 
sary here to consider. That trait is African des- 
potism, — unmitigated by any of the amenities of 



AFRICAN TITLES IN AMERICAN HANDS. 63 

revealed religion, or of modern learning or civil- 
ization, imported in the form of masses of the 
vilest barbarians, and participated in through 
the medium of a willing, constant, intimate, and 
lifelong intercommunication by the white race 
in Slave States. 

This, as all other forms of despotism, neces- 
sarily exists in two divisions, — in the imperious 
usurpation of dictatorial power on the part of a 
few over the many, and in the cringing acqui- 
escence under this dictation, on the part of the 
many. One of these divisions cannot long exist 
without the other; and the one is necessarily 
produced and propagated by the presence of the 
other. The former, or usurping, dictatorial class 
were not imported from Africa. These were 
generated on the spot by the presence of the 
servile masses. Yet the rights and authority in 
which they flourish were imported, and are pure- 
ly African. A barbarous father sold his child to 
the brutal slave-trader ; a bloody chief of an 
abject tribe surprised a sleeping village, and, 
after murdering a portion of its inhabitants, sold 
the rest to the slave-trader for rum and tobacco. 
Titles thus acquired to the lifelong services of 
the remotest descendants of these abject, god- 
less captives, are transferred to an American mas- 
ter, and in these he flourishes ; with the effect, it 



64 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

is true, to better the condition of the slave, for 
it does not admit of being made worse ; but with 
the effect on himself, to deprive him of all abiUty 
and disposition to act an honest part as a citizen 
of a democratic community, in supporting the 
principles and institutions of popular self-gov- 
ernment, or to understand that, looking at the 
matter with any other than the eyes of an Afri- 
can despot, it is not only undemocratic, but un- 
utterably mean, cruel, unjust, and dishonorable, 
to recognize any such title as that by Avhich the 
negro is held in bondage, or to fatten in useless 
idleness on the unrequited toil of a slave, com- 
pelled to labor by the force of superior intelli- 
gence and combination. 

The presence of these abject masses of Afri- 
cans, by elevating their owners into the position 
of lords and nobles, and by depriving the non- 
slave-holding Avhites, to a great extent, of the 
usual opportunities of productive labor, and also 
by rendering labor of the whites disreputable, 
thereby confining down the non-slave-holding 
whites, for the most part, to a state of hopeless 
poverty and idleness, perfected what the presence 
of nobles and great men had early begun, — the 
separation of Southern society into the two mon- 
archical grades of high and influential few, and 
low and uninfluential many; thus sealing and 



SLAVERY ADVERSE TO FREE SCHOOLS. 65 

rendering perpetual a social state inimical to 
democracy. 

The blacks, not only by the force of their ex- 
ample, remaining in contented ignorance, but by 
spreading out the white population so sparsely 
as to render public free schools ill-convenient 
for children to attend, contributed much to pre- 
vent that degree of general intelligence among 
the whites, without which affairs of government 
cannot safely be intrusted to the hands of the 
public at large. 

6* 



XI 



THE EFFECT OF SLAVERY TO COUNTERVAIL THE PROGRESS 
AND PERFECTING OF THE PRINCIPLES OF FREE GOVERN- 
MENT IN THE SOUTHERN STATES, EVEN AMONG THOSE WHO 
HELD THEIR SLAVES AT FIRST UNWILLINGLY. 

The last chapter was to have completed our 
notice of the causes that acted in the Southern 
States to stop the progress of those sentiments 
of freedom which had cleared the North of 
slaves. The closing passages of that chapter 
verged upon what is the stated aim of this, 
namely, to notice the effects of slavery while it 
was retained, to counteract the growth and to 
turn back the progress of the principles of free 
government. The influence exerted on the 
white community by that heathen mass, so dis- 
tributed as to come in contact with them at 
almost every point, cannot be overestimated in 
its effect of imparting to American minds Afri- 
can opinions and sentiments of what is advan- 
tageous, what is proper, and what is right, in 
regard to ownership, by one man, of property in 
the life and services, the bone, muscle, and brain, 
of another. The whole tone and spirit of the 



SLAVERY AND DESPOTISM INSEPARABLE. 67 

Anglo-Saxon mind and character must have been 
degraded and demorahzed by the contaminating 
influence of heathen associates — must have be- 
come essentially Africanized — before this doc- 
trine of property in man could have been per- 
manently introduced. 

But, having been once introduced, approved 
of, and rendered permanent, it requires but a 
glance to show that the deepest, darkest, form 
of despotism had been planted there, so that 
wherever African slavery existed, and was per- 
manently preferred to a state of society where 
all are free, there this lowest form of heathen des- 
potism obtained in principle and in practice, and 
slavery and despotism mutually confirmed each 
other, and both necessarily increased and ex- 
tended, till they reached and confronted the 
vital forces of a sincere democracy, there to 
rage and rave and perish, as they are now 
doing in the existing war. 

Much of American slave-holding is to be at- 
tributed to accident, and not to design or choice. 
In such cases, principles of free government 
were held and cherished sincerely, and without 
being greatly counteracted by the unwilling, ac- 
cidental, holding of the relation of master. Such 
w^as the case of Washington himself, of Jefferson, 
of Clay, and doubtless of the vast majority of 



68 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

slave-owners in the latter colonial times, and in 
the early history of the States. They lacked 
only opportunity, a sense of the important influ- 
ence slavery was secretly exerting against free 
government, and a more energetic enforcement 
of their own hearty preference in respect to it, 
to have freed themselves from its contaminating 
power. These, however, they lacked. They 
sluggishly acquiesced in its continuance. The 
degenerating, degrading influence of African asso- 
ciations acted on their descendants more and 
more in each succeeding generation, until the 
love and approbation of ownership in slaves be- 
gan generally to prevail, and with it all real at- 
tachment to the principles and institutions of 
free government were silently and unccfnsciously, 
but effectually and thoroughly, undermined and 
uprooted; and every one became unwittingly 
prepared to take his place at a greater or less 
elevation in the common grading of subordi- 
nates beneath a despotic head. 

I say every one became unwittingly thus pre- 
pared ; for if there had been one uncontaminated 
freeman left, he would have pronounced himself 
by severing that despotic head from the shoul- 
ders on which it was sustained, ere the meshes 
of tyrannical control had been woven around 
him, and his bleeding land laid desolate merely 



SOUTHERN UNIONISTS. 69 

to save that head from being severed. Per- 
haps this remark should be modified in favor 
of some whom compulsory distance or prison 
walls prevent from performing the desire of 
their hearts. 



XII. 

CONDITIONS WHICH SO MODIFY SLAVERY AS TO ABATE ITS 
INFLUENCE IN COUNTERACTING THE PROGRESS OF FREE 
PRINCIPLES. 

From the influence of climate, rendering the 
negroes prolific and content, and the whites 
averse to industry and toil ; from the influence 
of a soil so rich as to allow the thriftless system 
to continue ; from the influence of the numbers 
of slaves, rendering emancipation difficult and 
hazardous ; from the social influence of the 
blacks, acting to depress and Africanize the 
civilization of the whites, and to import and im- 
part the property-title, and the type-African, 
which is the lowest form of despotism ; and 
from the influence of the numbers of the blacks 
in spreading the white population so sparsely 
that free schools could not be maintained ; and 
perhaps from the influence of still other causes 
which have been overlooked, — it came to pass 
that the progress of the principles of free 
government, w^hich had abolished slavery in the 
Northern States, was stayed at Mason & Dixon's 
line. Slavery remained, and still remains, un- 

70 



DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY INCONGRUOUS. 71 

abolished^ and, till recently, prospering in the 
Southern States. What Hes before us now is 
to observe in detail the several ways in which 
this existing institution necessarily acts to con- 
vert back to the principles of political despotism 
the people of those Southern States who had 
once given in, with some emphasis, their adher- 
ence to the principles and (as far as white per- 
sons are concerned) to the practices of civil 
freedom. 

And, first, we are reminded by the language 
in which the above proposition is necessarily 
stated, that there is, and must be, a radical incon- 
gruity, a deep, internal self-contradiction in the 
pretence of adopting or adhering to the princi- 
ples of free government for one class of persons, 
while the same franchise is totally denied to 
another class in the same community, — the 
broadest, free government for whites, and the 
deepest, darkest despotism for blacks in the same 
community, and on the same soil. 

To obviate the bad appearance and bad result 
of this unhappy combination of despotism and 
democracy in the South, it is to be remembered, 
as already remarked, that much of the slave-hold- 
ing, as in the case of Washington and his com- 
peers, was accidental and without any sincere 
participation in the governmental principle 



72 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. j 

which wining and persistent slave-holding in- 
volves.* 

How far the practice of slave-holding, where 
the principle is rejected, will act gradually and 
silently to corrupt and undermine opinions and 
preferences favorable to free government, is 
a question that we cannot definitely decide. 
Where the unwilling slave-holder is constantly 
occupied, as were the fathers of the Republic, in 
elaborating the form, and erecting the institu- 
tions, of free government, the presence of this 
odious hulk of despotism would, doubtless, pro- 
voke a spirit of reaction against the govern- 
mental principle on which it is based. But, 
where the actual slave-owner, though favorable 
to free government, is left unoccupied by any 
employment that puts his love of freedom in 
active and trying exercise, although that love of 
freedom may not be consciously or entirely sub- 
verted by the practice of slave-holding, yet it 
will not be strange if his continual practical 
acquiescence in a system which he disapproves 
should have the effect to blunt his apprehension 
of what freedom really consists in, and so to 

* Those readers who are disposed to pursue a definite and extended 
inquiry into the expressed views of the fathers and foiinders of this gov- 
ernment, on the subject of "negroes as slaves, as citizens, and as soldiers," 
will find the material for such investigation collected ready to their hand, 
m An Historical Research, by George Livermore. Boston: A. Williams 
& Company, 1863. 



UNFITNESS OF NEGROES TO BE FREE. 73 

accustom him to submit to doing what he disap- 
proves that he would at length be found to be 
the fit man to enlist under the rankest despot, 
to fight for the "liberty" of holding other men in 
hondage. But there is still a very wide differ- 
ence between the willing and persistent, and the 
accidental and unwilling, holding of slaves, in 
respect to the influence which slave-holding 
exerts to undemocratize the master. 

Besides the accidental and unwilling character 
of much of the slave-holding that has character- 
ized the South, one other condition has inter- 
vened essentially to modify the influence which 
slave-holding would otherwise exert to counter- 
act the perfecting and the spread of principles 
of civil freedom. It is the unfitness of the 
negro, by reason of ignorance and vice, and of 
his low, spiritless, and barbarian traits, either to 
be himself profited by possessing the franchises 
of freemen, or to be a safe or useful member of 
a democratic community. 

There is no denying that negroes when freshly 
imported from their barbarous African homes,— 
where, according to the best of testimony, " nine- 
tenths of the inhabitants are slaves to the other 
tenth," — are utterly unfit to be intrusted with 
the privfleges of free citizenship in an enlight- 

17 



74 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 

ened community. And, during this pupilage of 
degraded feebleness and ignorance, which, where 
large masses of them are together, may last for 
generations, it is hardly violating the principles 
of civil freedom, to hold them dependent on 
masters as their proper guardians. This it was 
that rendered slavery in colonial and Revolu- 
tionary times, compatible with the inception, 
growth, and all-conquering progress of the prin- 
ciples of civil freedom. And this, together with 
the large amount of unwilling slave-holding that 
existed at the time the Constitution was adopted, 
rendered the authors and adopters of that instru- 
ment so little concerned about the anti-republi- 
can tendencies of the institution which they 
neglected to extirpate. 



XIII. 

THE GRADUAL DEPARTURE OF THOSE CONDITIONS WHICH 
RENDERED AFRICAN SLAVERY IN AMERICA MILD IN CHAR- 
ACTER AND SLIGHT IN INFLUENCE DURING THE FIRST 
CENTURY OR MORE OF ITS EXISTENCE. 

Historical events of the highest magnitude 
and importance often fail to be appreciated, 
because they take place gradually. Such was 
the case in the transition of negro slavery, by 
which it passed from the mild, accidental form, 
which marked the first century or more of its 
existence in this country, to the positiveness and 
virulence of its character in later j^ears. Had 
the boundaries of the original colonies remained 
unchanged, had the early character of our com- 
mercial exports not altered, and the political 
arena been free from agitation on the subject of 
slavery, then might the action of the institution, 
in respect to its influence on our peculiar civil 
system, have remained harmless as at first. But. 
unfortunately, neither of these conditions of 
its harmlessness was preserved. Our Western 
boundaries were extended until they embraced 
additional territory enough for a magnificent 

75 



76 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

empire, of the richest of soils, and under the 
same Southern sun. This gave to slaves a value 
that they never possessed in colonial times, and 
added new rivets to the bondage that previously 
appeared almost ready to fall off of its own 
accord. Next came, gradually, the discoveries, 
that cotton was one of the most desirable textile 
staples in the world, that every human being 
wanted it, in no stinted supply, for clothing, and 
could afford to pay well, according to his means, 
rather than be deprived of its use, that the soil 
and climate of the Southern States, with this 
newly-acquired Southern territory, were best 
adapted of any known to the production of this 
desired staple, and that slave-labor was better 
adapted to its cultivation than to an}^ other 
known branch of industry. Next came the im- 
provements in machinery for the cleaning and 
manufacture of cotton, which increased the de- 
mand for it ten thousand fold. The market 
money-value of negro slaves rose five hundred 
per cent, and settled forever, on the wrong side, 
the question whether the spreading application 
of the principles of free government should 
peaceably progress any farther in opposition to 
the sway of this darkest form of African des- 
potism. 

Now was the time^ as soon as the above facts 



NORTHERN QUIETUDE. 77 

became developed, to have recognized a state 
of irreconcilable war between slave-holders and 
their adherents on the one hand, and the up- 
holders of the principles on which the civil insti- 
tutions of our country had been founded, od 
the other hand. But the inherent imbecility of 
popular governments, as compared with mon- 
archies, in respect to matters of war and self- 
defence ; the cupidity of those at the North 
who contrived to share in the profits of lucrative 
slave-holding, and the intrigue of the slave-hold- 
ers to keep everything quiet until they could 
corrupt the Northern people, and grasp the reins 
of power in the general government, all wrought 
together to prevent alarm, until the designs of 
despotism had progressed so -far that, in the 
estimation of disinterested European statesmen 
and observers, the fate of free governments in 
general, and of the United States in particular, 
was sealed, before the people of the Northern 
States allowed themselves to beUeve that any- 
thing was seriously amiss with them. 
. While the area of fertile Southern territory 
was being extended, and the enormous and 
lucrative business of cotton production was being 
developed, and the pecuniary value of slaves 
was being doubled over and over again, thus fix- 
ing them in their state of bondage beyond the 

7» 



78 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

hope of any peaceable release or relaxation, an- 
other change was silently and gradually taking 
place, which enhanced the tyrannical and op- 
pressive nature of their bondage, about in the 
same proportion in which its perpetuity became 
inevitable. This was, the growing intelligence, 
civilization, and Christian enlightenment, of the 
negroes, which fitted them daily more and more 
to enjoy the privileges, and to discharge the 
duties, of freemen ; thereby rendering it daily a 
greater and greater outrage on the principles 
of free government to hold them in servitude. 

We have before remarked that where two 
masses of population, of different degrees of 
elevation and enlightenment, were thrown to- 
gether on terms of intimate and constant inter- 
change, the result must be, not only that the 
more elevated would be brought down, but the 
more degraded would be elevated, until a common 
medium level should have been reached by each. 
The master may designedly and systematically 
withhold from his slave the art of reading, and 
all instruction tending to his enlightenment and 
elevation ; but it is not within the power of that 
master to prevent the slave from learning a 
lesson for his improvement every time he looks 
on, or listens to, a person more intelligent, more 
civilized, or more a Christian, than himself This 



NEGRO IMPROVEMENT AND ITS RESULTS. 79 

course of improvement must go on, on the part 
of the blacks, until their masters, and those 
whites with whom they come in contact, in their 
downward course, come to a level where the 
two grades of civilization meet, and the neo-ro 
has no more of civilization, manhood, or Christi- 
anity, to learn of his once superior master. In 
proportion as the negro thus becomes elevated, 
intelligent, and fit for freedom, the policy and 
the practice that confine him down to servi- 
tude become bereft of palliation, and stand 
out in active and confessed hostility to the 
principles of all free government. 



XIV. 

THE ULTIMATE, POSITIVE, AND EFFICIENT, ACTION OF SLAVE- 
HOLDING IN RADICALLY CONVERTING THE SENTIMENTS OF 
THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE BACK FROM DEMOCRACY TO DES- 
POTISM. 

Serious and important occupation has a pow- 
erful influence in moulding the sentiments of 
one who is heartily occupied therein. The try- 
ing labors and sacrifices of the Revolutionary 
struggle, with the discussions which preceded 
and followed them, acted strongly to generate 
and confirm a love of freedom in the hearts 
of those, on the American side, by whom these 
toils and sacrifices were sustained. The pe- 
riod which we are now about to consider is 
one in which such occupations and their in- 
fluence have long since passed away. The 
enervating, corrupting, influences of protract- 
ed peace and unexampled affluence have suc- 
ceeded to the struggles and hardships of Revo- 
lutionary and colonial times. The pursuit of 
personal aggrandizement has succeeded to an 
absorbing interest in the nation's welfare. In 
those States where slavery never extensively 

80 



THE RISE AND VIRULENCE OP SLAVERY. 81 



existed, and has been abolished, agriculture, 
mechanics, and every industrial pursuit, are fol- 
lowed with an earnestness and success unparal- 
leled under monarchical government. 

In those States where slavery still flourishes, 
supine submissiveness to ignorance and poverty 
and the domination of the few, seizes on the 
many ; while the possession and management of 
acres and of slaves, and the influence and emolu- 
ments of public office, form the objects of suc- 
cessful aspiration to the few, — the "master 
race," as some of their public orators have the 
modesty to call themselves. 

The palliation of slavery, that grew out of 
the unfltness of the negroes for freedom, has 
largely passed away. The comparative in- 
difference with vrhich slave-owners formerly 
regarded their right of property in the slave, 
owing to their small pecuniary value, and to 
the ugly incongruity between the master's 
claims for freedom for himself, and for secure 
bondage for his negro, has also passed away. 
His African associations have implanted in the 
mind of the master an opinion favorable to the 
justice and propriety of his claim on the ser- 
vices of his slave. The increased numbers of 
his fellow-slave-holders, and the increased age 
of the institution, confirm the same opinion, and 



82 NATURAL HISTOHY OF SECESSION. 

quiet feelings of uneasiness respecting the incon- 
gruity of his claims. The enlarged bounds of 
fertile slave territory dispel apprehensions of 
trouble from the impoverishment of the soil ; 
and the lucrativeness of cotton-raising insures 
him large pecuniary returns, either for raising 
cotton or for raising slaves. Now what a school 
is this in which to learn democracy, and perfect 
these preferences for popular freedom which are 
not mature'* At the same time and in the same 
proportion in which negroes have become more 
fitted to be free, and their labor has become 
more valuable, arose the necessity for guarding 
against insurrection, and for systematic legisla- 
tion and police regulations, rendering this kind 
of property secure. Laws had to be passed by 
each State, prohibiting the instruction of slaves, 
lest their learning should render them more de- 
sirous of freedom, more competent to secure it, 
and more accessible to the approaches of de- 

* The term republic, though sometimes used as substantially srnonymous 
•with democracy, may with propriety be applied to a republic of slave- 
holders, or a leagued band of aristocrats. So far as the latter is its true 
import, the Constitution of the United States, in its provision that the 
government of each several State shall be republican, simply covers up 
the seeds of its own destniCtion. So far as the import of the word is 
synon;sTTious with democracy, this provision of the general Constitution 
has been violated every time a Slave State has been admitted to the Union. 
Democracy and Despotism divide the imiverse of civil affairs between them. 
There is and can be no middle ground that will not, of necessity, soon merge 
itself in the one or the other. 



SLAVE INTERESTS CONSOLIDATE. 83 

signing disturbers of the patriarchal system. 
Also, laws bj each State prohibiting emancipa- 
tion within its bounds, and the ingress of free 
negroes ; lest individual owners, who felt averse 
to slave-trading, should free vicious negroes, to 
save themselves the most unpleasant task of con- 
trolling them, and the number and character of 
the free colored population should thereby be- 
come such as to make slaves uneasy, and en- 
; danger the public safety. Thus slave-holding 
became more and more consolidated into a sys- 
tem, and the individual owner became less and 
less at liberty to pursue any course which was 
not dictated by regard for the interests and 
quiet of all slave-holders. 

The effect of this consolidation — the imposed 
necessity of acting together for the protection 
of an imperilled interest — was not only a great 
advance toward monarchy ; itself constitutes 
a great essential element of. monarchy. 

It was the necessity of defending national ex- 
istence amidst menacing or actually hostile na- 
tions that first induced the prevalence of mon- 
archy. Produce one great, all-absorbing interest 
of a class, or section, even in a republic, and let 
it be surrounded by sentiments and interests 
adverse to its prosperity, and you have got a 
consolidation of peculiar interests. You will 



84 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

soon have, on the part of their holders, a unar 
nimity of views and a wilHng acquiescence in 
anything which promises to subserve and render 
those pecuHar and imperilled interests secure. 
You have got seven-tenths of all that is requi- 
site to a monarchy, and the other three-tenths 
cannot, from the nature of things, be long want- 
ing. It was this unanimity, resulting from neces- 
sary consolidation on this peculiar interest, that 
gave to some 60,000 Southern slave-holders a 
perpetually preponderating influence in the af- 
fairs of the general government, which neither 
one nor all of the varying political interests, and 
combinations of half as many millions of other 
population have been able to countervail. 

Combinations on an imperilled interest like 
this, are necessarily fatal to any republic, not 
itself entirely comprehended in the combina- 
tion. 

Had the stakes involved in the preservation 
of slavery been of less pecuniary value, or had 
the principles and practices of slavery been less 
repugnant to everything around them, then 
had the consolidation been less constraining, and 
the results less decisive. Had the interests of 
slave-holders remained unimportant as at the 
time of the Kevolution, then had they remained 
as harmless. But the unexpected and unex- 



THE WAR NECESSITATED. 85 

ampled rise of the importance of slave-holders* 
interests, taking place contemporaneously with 
the spread and maturing of the principles and 
forms of free government, developed the latent 
antagonism of the two systems, and necessitated 
the present war, which might have been calcu- 
lated years ago, by any skilful and clear-minded 
statesman, with as much certainty as the astrono- 
mer calculates an eclipse. 



XY. 

ARGUMENT DEFINED, AND FORCES POINTED OUT AS THEY 
APPEAR IN HISTORY, WHICH FORCES HAVE FORMED AND 
STIMULATED OUR SOUTHERN BRETHREN TO THEIR PRESENT 
ONSLAUGHT ON ALL DEMOCRACY. 

Besides obtaining a just apprehension of the 
influence of slavery in general, to counteract the 
progress of free government, we are here to 
examine the influence in this direction of African 
slavery as it exists in this country, and also as it 
has existed during recent years, in contradistinc- 
tion from the same as it existed at and before 
the founding of our free institutions. The ques- 
tion obtrudes itself for answer. Why has the insti- 
tution which at, and prior to, the adoption of the 
Constitution exerted little or no influence adverse 
to the rise and establishment of civil freedom, 
since exerted so powerful an influence as to con- 
vert back again to principles of the darkest des- 
potism the sons of sires who, amidst the acting 
of the same slavery system, suffered and bled for 
freedom? The answer is to be found in the 
altered action of the system. At the same time 
that slaves and their labor have risen enormously 

86 



POLITICAL EFFECT OF SLAVERY. 87 

in money value, and a stringent and powerful 
police system lias had to be everywhere put in 
operation for the security of this peculiar species 
of property, the slaves themselves, having ad- 
vanced greatly in attaining the language, senti- 
ments, intelligence, and civilization of their mas- 
ters, feel more and more keenly the v/rong that 
is done them by the system, and react against it 
with more pressing and perpetual elasticity. 

The fact that no arguments are heard from 
their lips against the policy of their enslavement, 
that few fights are made by them to demonstrate 
their unwillingness to remain longer enslaved, 
that only now and then a plot is discovered for 
a general rising to free themselves, does not 
prove that there is no strong and ceaseless pres- 
sure on their part against the confines that cir- 
cumscribe their freedom ; they rather prove the 
success with which their masters have learned 
the arts that despots use to keep their victims in 
subjugation. It is not our object here to discuss 
the right or wrong of slavery. That there is 
such a distinction, and that it is important to be 
attended to, we freely admit ; but that is not the 
theme of these remarks. These pages are not 
intended to contain an essay on morals or reli- 
gion ; they profess to deal with politics purely ; 
and with these only in reference to despotism 
and democracy, and the relations or repulsions 



88 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

that necessarily exist between them. Of this 
subject we treat, as it ajDplies to, and is iUustrated 
by, the past history and present condition of 
affairs in the United States, — the home and seat 
of the only permanent democratic government 
the history of the world has yet presented. 
Therefore, when we speak of the stringent legis- 
lation and police arrangements that have been 
gradually built up around the slaves to keep 
them safe, at the same time and in the same pro- 
portion in which the money-value of these slaves 
has gradually and enormously increased ; and 
while we speak of the gradually increasing fit- 
ness of the slaves for freedom, and their conse- 
quently increasing desire and demand for free- 
dom, which takes place at the same time that the 
provisions for keeping them securely in bondage 
are tightened and strengthened, our object is not 
to direct attention to the moral crime of slavery 
at all, but purely to present the fact of the per- 
petually increasing intensity of the conflict 
between slavery and freedom, between despot- 
ism and democracy, — the development of the 
latent and necessary conflict on the part of the 
negroes to be free, and on the part of the mas- 
ters to retain them in secure and profitable sub- 
servience to their lust of power and of gain. 
Our object in turning attention to the constantly 
increasing intensity of this conflict is not to show 



NEGROES TAUGHT DEMOCRACY. 89 

the cruelty or the moral wrong of keeping the 
negroes still in servitude, but to point out the 
tremendous and necessary effect of the perpet- 
ually intensifying strife to mature and perfect 
those masters, and such as are acting with them, 
in the spirit and the precepts, the principles and 
practices, of despotism, — of exercising despotic 
and dictatorial control over their fellow-men. 

Among the smaller changes that have taken 
place, which have contributed to make up the 
whole great sum of altered circumstances which 
give to slavery, as it recently existed, an hun- 
dred-fold the power it once possessed to despotize 
American democracy, is that mutual exchange 
by which not only has the African imparted to 
his American master much of his barbaric char- 
acter, and especially his native leanings toward 
the darkest form of despotism, but in return has 
received not only gradual enlightenment, civil- 
ization, and Christianity, but also a preference 
and fitness for the institutions of free govern- 
ment. The history of the freed slaves colonized 
in Liberia demonstrates this. And the possess- 
ing of this predisposition for free government, 
which they could have acquired nowhere but in 
this country, makes their bondage more grievous 
to them, and their reaction against imposed 
restraints more incessant and intense. 

8* 



XVI. 

THE ABOVE DEFINED ARGUMENT PRESENTED IN DETAIL — THE 
MOULDING PRESSURE CONTINUALLY RESTING ON THOSE 
WHO FEEL THEMSELVES RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRESERVA- 
TION OF QUIET IN THE SLAVE STATES — ITS EFFECT. 

We now propose to examine more in detail the 
practical workings of those principles, and that, 
too, under the circumstances which we have 
above stated and defined. 

The negroes have now come to be three or 
four millions. The price of a field-hand has 
risen from its former range of from one to three 
hundred dollars to cotton-planting value of from 
ten to fifteen hundred dollars, and a ready cash 
sale at that. What is the mode of operating to 
render this amount of property secure and pro- 
ductive? 

The whole power of the United States army 
and navy is understood to stand pledged to sup- 
press insurrection and to return fugitive slaves. 

There is then some danger that large or small 
portions of this valuable property shall make 
use of its legs and run away. There is also 
danger, — grave enough, in the incipient stage 



PRESSURE OF PERIL ON SLAVE-MASTERS. 91 

in which the peril existed seventy-five years ago, 
to deserve a constitutional provision, — that this 
intelligent property, of which " its follies and 
its crimes have stamped it man," should take to 
itself the weapons of vengeance and inflict im- 
mense sufferings on those whom it supposes to 
be the authors of its conscious wrongs. 

This danger is no less than the danger of 
losing an aggregate of twenty-six hundred mil- 
lions of dollars' worth of property, and of the 
devastation of a greater or less portion of the 
soil of the Southern States, with the slaughter of 
its white inhabitants. These surely are grave 
perils, and the weight of them is sufficient of 
itself to make despots of as many men as are 
left to feel that the responsibility of providino* 
against these perils rests upon themselves. 

The strain and pressure of such a responsibility 
is probably entirely beyond the comprehension of 
one who has been born and educated in the con- 
fiding quiet and equal privileges of democratic 
civilization. Such an one has no experience in 
his history in which to find a simile that would 
parallel for an hour the strain of this life-long 
responsibility that rests more or less sensibly on 
every intelligent and habitual dweller in a slave- 
holding community, but more sensibly and im- 
mediately on the slave-holder himself who has 



92 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

a wife and children, parents, brothers, sisters, and 
friends, involved with him in the same more or 
less imminent peril. One, from prodigality or 
moral refinement, may divest himself of any 
desire or esteem for the pecuniary value repre- 
sented by property which statutes of the country 
recognize and guarantee in slaves ; but the ter- 
rible consequences of permitting or provoking 
any extensive struggle on their part to free 
themselves must appall the stoutest heart that is 
not prepared to sport with wide-spread devasta- 
tion and human suffering and slaughter. 

With this standing peril ever hanging over 
them, it may at first be supposed, that the South- 
ern mind had become callous to its force ; but 
history, and somewhat extended personal obser- 
vation, have convinced the author that, from the 
passion-kindling influence of the climate, fi^om 
the absence of other things to displace this from 
the attention, or from other causes, the fear of 
slave insurrection, instead of being deadened by 
use, remains extremely vivid, if it does not grow 
increasingly so, in the majority of Southern 
minds. I knew the ladies of an extensive neigh- 
borhood, in a Slave State, with scarcely any 
exception, to pass a week of sleepless anxiety 
and fear, because they heard a rumor that some 



FORM OF CHARACTER WROUGHT BY PERIL. 93 

barges filled with negroes were seen to pass a 
neighboring river. 

Accustomed from infancy to revel in the 
broadest liberty that ever was coupled with the 
sweets of civilization, comparatively few men in 
the Northern States are acquainted with any 
object of fear, in heaven, earth, or hell, that is 
capable of imposing on them the practical 
restraint which the slave-holder, and those con- 
nected with him, ordinarily feel, from the fear 
of a slave insurrection."-^' It is an imposed re- 
straint which they never question, never par- 
ley with. Its dominion over them is absolute. 
And one of the functions of this absolute alle- 
giance is, never to allow its authority to be ques- 
tioned by others, within their borders or with- 
out them, so far as they have the power to 
prevent. 

His Creator — and it is rare to find a Southern 
man who questions either his existence or his 
claims — may or may not be obeyed. That is 
a matter which every individual is perfectly free 
to exercise his own preference upon. The au- 

* The tens of thousands of lives, and the hunch-eds of millions of money, 
•which the existing war is yearly extorting from the Northern people, has 
roused in few if any of the minds of the millions who remain at home, the 
amount of serious earnestness and persistent devotion which instantly took 
possession of the mind of each intelligent Southerner, the moment he was 
called to contemplate a serious disturbance of the power-imposed quiet of 
their slaves. 



94 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

thority of the country's laws and government, 
every one is usually considered at liberty to 
ret'-ard or disregard as he pleases. So also with 
the claims of truth, justice, and humanity. But 
any risk of raising a slave insurrection is not to 
be incurred, come what will. 

V/hat is a republic, what is a democracy, 
under such circumstances? What, but a con- 
ventional equality of command in a community 
of despots? 

Twenty-six senators, and three or four times 
that number of representatives from the South- 
ern States, assemble annually at the national 
capitol, professedly to legislate for the benefit 
of the common population of the whole country, 
and under oath to support the common govern- 
ment; but, in reality, a leagued band, trained 
and disciplined under recognized leaders, armed 
with side-arms of the carnal sort, and with all 
the panoply of rhetoric, logic, sophistry, parlia- 
mentary tactics, diplomatic guile, political effron- 
tery, and county-court tergiversation. But what 
are they there to do ? One thing, — the same 
that they have done from inflmcy, and will con- 
tinue to do as long as breath is in them and 
they have the power of voluntary motion, — the 
thing which will be done effectually in those 
legislative halls and elsewhere, wherever these 



SLAVE-HOLDERS AS GENERAL LEGISLATORS. 95 

men are found, their own oaths, and the learn- 
ing, the logic, the rights, and the numbers of 
their opponents to the contrary notwithstanding, 
viz. : see to it that the absolute and practically 
unlimited despotic power of masters over their 
slaves remains undisturbed, unapproached by 
any unfriendly restriction, check, or limitation ; 
see that no law is passed, and no act unrebuked, 
unrevenged, is performed, that would in the 
remotest manner encourage a slave to run away 
from his master, or inspire in the negroes, as a 
class, the faintest gleam of hope or expectation 
that their oppressed condition is to be ameliorat- 
ed. In other words, the one unvarying task of 
those assembled legislators from the Southern 
States — the thing which they will be perfectly 
sure to see accomplished at all times and in all 
places, and despite all difficulties and opposition 
— is to provide that the dominion of that malign 
divinity, the presiding genius of slave-holding, 
the very soul and essence of the darkest, deep- 
est, and most damning, form of despotism, before 
whom they have bowed down and worshipped 
all their lives, and (though less devoutly) their 
fathers before them, remains unmolested, unin- 
fringed upon. This worship they pa.y and this 
service they perform, not more because they 
love to than because they must. To escape the 



96 NATUKAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

inexorable exigency of the position in which 
thc}^ have been born, requh^es a breadth of com- 
prehension, abiht}^, and benevolence, which prob- 
ably it is not possible should be generated in 
the walks of slave-holders. 



XTII. 

INTENSITY OF THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE PRINCIPLES 
OF FREE GOVERNMENT AND THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH 
SLAVES ARE GOVERNED — THE LATTER ANALYZED — THE 
PRECEPT THE PENALTY CHECKS ON THE LATTER. 

Why have the upbuildings and outgrowths of 
institutions of benevolence, philanthropy, reli- 
gion, and missionary zeal, which have preemi- 
nently characterized, adorned, and blessed, our 
common land, giving the powerful weight of 
their testimony in favor of the beneficent influ- 
ence of free government, been able to accom- 
plish so little in mitigating 'the severe exactions 
made upon the Southern slave, — in softening 
the sharp iron of the despotism which has this 
prone servitude for its base ? 

The answer is found in the same facts that 
account for the turning back of the wave of 
free principles, which, sweeping from the North, 
exi^^inguished slavery in one-half of the original 
States. 

The opportunity to peaceably abolish slavery 
from the Southern States presented itself at the 
time of the adoption of the present form of our 

9 97 



98 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION. 

general government. But it was an opportu- 
nity that soon passed, to return no more. The 
latent antagonism that existed between the 
principles of despotism and democracy became 
rapidly developed by the constantly irritating 
contact of the two, and it soon became impos- 
sible to modify either, until the one should be 
extinguished utterly by the armed and bloody 
triumph of the other. As well might one go 
on a mission of peace to the eternal abode of 
devils and damned spirits, expecting to harmo- 
nize their jarring strifes, and to produce an 
enduring compromise between the conflicting 
passions of those who there abide, as think 
effectually to obviate or compromise the conflict 
that has raged in this country for the last half- 
century, for the most part with unbloody weap- 
ons, but which has now assumed the more natu- 
ral and effective form of fierce and bloody, not 
to say exterminating, war. Any truce, or com- 
promise, or compact, or division of territory, 
that could be agreed upon, would of necessity 
be only the inauguration of interminable, vexa- 
tious, bloody, and disastrous, hostilities. 

Look at the mode of operation by which mur- 
murs are quieted, and aspirations after freedom 
suppressed, by masters among their slaves. In 



PRECEPT AND PENALTY FOR SLAVES. 99 

doing this, we may as well start with the prac- 
tice at its origin, in Africa, where '* nine-tenths 
of the population are slaves to the other tenth," ••' 
where the lives of slaves are held at so cheap a 
rate, that they are slaughtered by hundreds, 
as a token of respect to a deceased monarch. 
There, we need not be told, that physical suffer- 
ings, unto permanent maiming, and the death 
penalty, are inflicted without stint, wherever 
and whenever the owner of a slave supposes he 
has any occasion to inflict them. In the hands 
of the slave-trader who brings them across the 
ocean, or buys them to sell again after they ar- 
rive, the same mode of government prevails, 
mitigated by nothing but the increased pecuni- 
ary value of the slave, and the corresponding 
pecuniary loss, in case of crippling or killing 
him, as he approaches the plantation where he 
is to spend his life of labor. 

When arrived on that plantation, and fixed in 
his condition for life, and for the lives of his pos- 
terity after him, the precept by which he is, and 
is to be, governed is still the will and pleasure 
of his owner, and the penalty of violating that 
precept is physical suffering, restrained only by 
the pecuniary estimation in which he is held, 

* This statement is quoted verbally from Commodore Gregory, of the 
U. S. Navy, who spent ten years in service on the African coast. 



100 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

the greater or less humanity of his master, and 
perhaps a law of the State, prescribing some 
pmiishmeiit for killing him, provided the murder 
is confessedly unprovoked, and can be proved 
by the testimony of white witnesses. 

Look at these three items, that alone tend to 
mitigate the intensity of Africa's barbarous des- 
potism. 

The high pecuniary value at which the slave 
is held by his master acts to guard that slave 
from the extrem.e of inhuman punishment and 
death. Does this avail anything to obviate the 
extreme degradation of his servile condition, 
or the despotic supremacy of his master over 
him ? If it does, then let us make due allow- 
ance. But though the degradation of the slave 
whose master values him at a high price appears 
not in every sense to be as low as that of one 
w^hose life would be sacrificed for a trifle, yet 
the negro, in his more valuable estate, is proba- 
bly the more intelligent, feels this servitude 
more, and, though his elevation changes the 
field of its operation, it does not, probably, mit-^ 
igate the tyrannous intent and purpose of his' ^ 
master in holding hiai in bondage. Indeed, the 
intention of the master, in holdino; the hio-h- 
priced, intelligent negro in a bondage which 
he strongly resists, is probably more tyran- 



ABSOLUTENESS OF SLAVE DESPOTISM. 101 

nical than that which holds the low-priced 
slave, who scarcely has the intelligence or the 
manhood to desire to be free. And what we 
are looking for, in this investigation, is not the 
degradation or suffering of the slave, or any- 
thing else, other than the despotic principle, and 
purpose, and action, of the master ; and this, too, 
only as the exercise of this despotic principle, or 
purpose, on the part of the master, tends to 
confirm itself, and to make him radically a 
despot. 

The legal restriction in the Slave States, 
against the master taking the life of his slave, 
is just enough to constitute a legislative ac- 
knowledgment that the negroes are human be- 
ings, without practical force enough to afford 
them any substantial protection, even of their 
lives. The legal requirement in respect to tes- 
timony is so easily evaded, and the assertion of 
resistance, or assault, on the part of the negro, 
is so easily maintained by the master, that con- 
viction for the murder of a slave, if the murder 
had been conducted with any prudent safeguard 
against notoriety, would be impossible. But the 
operation of pecuniary interest which the mas- 
ter has in his slave constitutes quite an ample 
protection in this regard. 

9* 



XVIII. 

THE ABOVE ANALYSIS CONCLUDED — CHECKS ON SEVERE PEN- 
ALTIES — BENEVOLENCE OF THE MASTER — THESE CHECKS 
LIMITED AND REVERSED BY STATE NECESSITIES — RESULTS. 

The enlightened benevolence of the Ameri- 
can master — although this is a very uncertain 
quantity, yet, in the aggregate, in comparison 
with the murderous cruelty of the African mas- 
ter, it is exceedingly great and precious — consti- 
tutes the chief cause of mitigating the exercise 
of that tyrannical authority which the American 
slave-owner possesses; thereby mitigating the 
reactive effect which the exercise of that author- 
ity would have, to annihilate the remnant of his 
own free principles. The enjoyment of ease 
and affluence tends to make one generous 
toward others. The Africanization which the 
master's mind has undergone, through the influ- 
ence of negro educating and negro society, has 
not entirely reversed this tendency. 

If the principles of free government still re- 
tain any sway in the master's mind, they will 
join their influence to that of a native or acquired 

102 



MITIGATIONS OF SLAVE DESPOTISM — THEIR LIMIT. 103 

benevolence, inducing that master to leave un- 
used much of the despotic power over his slave, 
with which the civil code of his State invests 
him. Hence arose that softening-down of the 
claims and pretensions of mastership which had 
well-nigh yielded up the whole system of slavery, 
at about the period of the adoption of the 
Federal Constitution. Hence, also, that lack of 
sympathy with the slave system, which caused it 
to be absolutely abhorred by thousands who 
continued to practice it from the force of circum- 
stances, which they lacked the skill and energy 
to control. 

But all of these mitigating influences were 
doomed to meet their limit, and their final defeat 
and reversal, in the State necessity, as it may be 
called, — the necessity of treating the negroes 
in such a way as would secure the public welfare, 
beyond a peradventure, against insurrectionary 
disturbance. What this mode of treatment is, 
it is not left wholly to individual judgment to 
decide. Education, universal usage, and an 
exacting public sentiment, determine that it 
shall be such usage as will effectually keep down 
all manifest aspirations after a better condition, 
— that the art of reading and writing, and all 
means of increased intelhgence shall be, as far 
as possible, inhibited, — that the personal property 



104 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

held by slaves shall be kept down as near as 
possible to zero ; especially the possession of any- 
thing that might be used as an offensive or de- 
fensive weapon shall not be permitted; that 
the orders of the master, any member of his 
white family, or his overseer, shall be performed, 
right or wrong, under penalty of the severest 
chastisement. After all this has been exacted 
and complied with, I know not that it is adding 
anything, to say that the most obsequious defer- 
ence is exacted of, and paid by, every negro, to 
every white person of the master-class when in 
his presence. 

The justice of the master's claim to every- 
thing the negro is, or has, or can produce, is 
never permitted for a moment to be questioned. 
The negro has no rights, is to advance none, 
to defend none. Food and clothing of some 
sort, and attendance when sick, are secured to 
him by the master's property interest in his 
health and ef&ciency. Other than these, it is 
deemed to be extremely imprudent to allow a 
negro to claim as his any right or privilege 
whatever. To do so would open the way for 
negroes to make larger and larger claims, and 
wpuld certainly lead to some struggle on their 
part to maintain and enforce such claims. The 
only way to keep them quiet is not to allow 



MASTERS MUST PUNISH SLAVES. 105 

them to claim as their right anything whatever, 
or to possess anything but what their master 
pleases graciously to allow. Here is the limit 
that is set to the exercise of benevolence or free 
principles on the part of the master among his 
negroes. The exigencies of the public safety 
forbid these bounds to be enlarged, and enforce 
this prohibition by the peril of all the untold 
loss and horrors of servile insurrection. 

Look for a moment at the means by which 
the slave-owner, be he benevolent or malevolent, 
be he monarchist or republican, must enforce 
upon his negro this abnegation of all claims to 
any personal right, — this implicit, unquestioning 
obedience to his owner's will. Suppose a negro 
slave to question or resist his master's right to 
dispose of him as he pleases. It matters not 
w^hen, or where, or in what manner, this lack of 
submissiveness is manifested. There is one law for 
that refractory slave, and, like the laws of the 
Medes and Persians, it changes not. Physical 
sufferino- must be meted out till that rebellious 
will is broken. The punishment may be admin- 
istered by the owner in person, or by his deputy. 
The master may or may not superintend and 
prescribe the limit. The punishment must 
emanate from the master's right, and is to vindi- 



106 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

cate and sustain his authority, and it is not 
optional with that master whether to punish or 
not. The first condition of owning a slave, 
according to the African system Americanized, 
the system universally practised in the Southern 
States, is to enforce submission by corporal 
punishment to any needed extent ; and every 
negro and every intelligent white person in the 
South knows this to be so. So that to own a 
slave and not whip him, is as impossible as it is 
to live in the body without breathing, except so 
far as the slave anticipates the whipping, and 
prevents it by sincere, unvarying, submissive 
obedience. Other than this, there is no alterna- 
tive, except to sell the slave, — a punishment 
which he usually dreads next to death. 

This whipping is not often done in public. It 
is not usually done in the presence of the white 
family, or where they will even hear the negro's 
cries. The generally prevailing opinion among 
masters is, that the less of it is done, the better ; 
and the more silently, the better. That every 
expedient of successful government should be 
resorted to in order to avoid it, both on account 
of its unpleasantness, its brutifying effect on 
the master, or those who act under him, and the 
danger of damage to the slave. But, however 



MASTERS MUST PUNISH SLAVES. 107 

obscurely concealed, however remotely post- 
poned, there it is, known, calculated on, and 
inevitable; the slave that refuses to submit 
implicitly to his master must be whipped till he 
yields. 



XIX. 

RESULTS OF ABOVE ANALYSIS RECAPITULATED AND APPLIED. 

We have, then, from an analysis of slavery, 
this result : The slave is deprived of all rights, 
has all aspirations after liberty suppressed, is 
reduced to, and retained in, implicit subjection 
to his master's will. He is placed in this position 
by statute laws recognizing the claim of an 
African captor, or purchaser, to the lifelong ser- 
vices of his slave, and of that slave's descendants, 
and also recognizing this claim, now termed a 
right, as it stands transferred from an African to 
an American owner. This law is enforced, and 
the benefits of this right are exacted, by the 
ever-present fact or fear of corporal suffering, 
inflicted to an unlimited extent by the authority, 
and according to the will, of the slave-owner. 
Any mitigation of these conditions is accidental, 
— is due to the kindness and the skill, the benev- 
olent and freedom-loving spirit which the mas- 
ter may happen to possess ; and is limited and 
restrained by the imminent danger that public 
disturbance and incalculable calamity will result 

108 



SLAVE-HOLDING MAKES DESPOTS. 109 

from any considerable relaxation, or failure to 
enforce his claim, on the part of the master. 

Now, and here, the very important question 
arises, How long can a man occupy, exercise, and 
enforce the claims of a master on his slaves, 
without becoming himself imbued with the 
spirit and principles of a despot, and without 
having his attachment to the principles of free 
government sadly undermined ? 

Certainly, if that man has in his composition 
the average natural amount of logic, he must 
exercise the functions of master with extreme 
reluctance, and must find his most cherished and 
indulged associates remote from the servility of 
slaves, or, before he is aware of it, the principles 
of free government, as held by him, will have 
become a mere inoperative, dreamlike theory, 
however strongly he may suppose himself to be 
attached to them ; and the whole tendency and 
habit of his mind and character will have been 
moulded to every lineament of a despot. 

While the slave system was in its incipiency, 
while the master held the unenlightened African 
as much from motives of benevolence as of gain, 
and cared little whether the worthless wretches 
were retained or free, slave-holding could not 
have had much power to mould the principles 
and political habits of the master. But, as the 

10 



110 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

established institutions of the country began to 
exert a pressure on that master in favor of the 
principles of free government, and to demand 
from him a sincere and active support; as the 
negro became more and more enlightened and 
fit for freedom, and more and more desirous of 
obtaining it, thus exerting a constantly increas- 
ing pressure against the force that kept him 
down in servitude ; and as, at the same time, the 
high and advancing price of slave-labor induced 
the slave-holder, from motives of pecuniary gain, 
to grasp with new vigor, and exercise with new 
stringency, the power by which he held hi& slave 
in bondage, — then it w^as that the power of the 
practice of slave-holding became irresistible to 
mould the governmental principles of the slave- 
holder; then it was that the whole Southern 
mind became so tempered with, and infected by, 
the intoxicating sweets of despotic authority, 
that nothing was wanting but the agitating pres- 
ence of a bold and desperate leader, to precipitate 
the infected mass into the solid form of a con- 
crete despotism/^ And the present war has 

* " I say to every man present, that there exists not on the face of the 
earth to-day a deeper nor a darker despotism than now reigns over the 
Southern people."— SjKech of Gen. Corcoran on Boston Common, Aug. 29th, 
1862. ■ 

" I had no idea that the whole people of a county could be so frightened 
as to pcnnit a few men like Walter IMitchell and Wm. B. Stone and their 
confederates to create a reign of ten*or in their midst. But such was the 



HATRED TO FREEDOM FORCED ON THE FIGHT. Ill 

followed as naturally and as necessarily as dark- 
ness follows the setting of the natural sun. And 
the present war must last, with all its world- 
rocking commotions and its local devastation, till 
one or the other of the conflicting principles, 
either despotism or democracy, with its final ad- 
herents, no longer survives with power to carry 
on the conflict. When the Southern leaders tell 
us (and no Southern man, except their leaders, 
ever tells us anything, except what has been put 
into his mouth) that they have been forced into 
this fight, they tell the truth. And the trueness 
of the statement arises on this wise : From the 
moulding force of slavery, or, to speak with more 
definiteness, from the moulding force of their 
perilous mastership, acting in their education, 
their characters have become stamped with every 
lineament of despotism, and their interests, so 
far as they are able to discern where they lie, 
are identified with the perpetuity of that hoary 
crime. Hence the presence of an antagonist so 
inimical as a free, self-governing people, vital 
with the spirit of their civil institutions, and 

fact : the people were so frightened, that it would htive been impossible to 
have raised fifty men in the whole county to fight the few rebel soldiers in 
Port Tobacco."— Prim^e Letter from Charles Co., Md., Aug. 12th, 1862. 

" The Confederates once whipped in Vir.iHnia, and you will hear one pro- 
longed and thiindering shout for the downfall of this damnable government 
from New Orleans to Fortress' Monroe." — Private Letter from Charleston, 
S. C, July 20th, 1862. 



112 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

shining with success, necessitates this war, and 
will continue so to do till one or the other of the 
hostile parties is converted or consumed. 

This necessity for a state of war has arisen, 
not from any change that has taken place in the 
North ] not from anything the Northern people 
have done ; but from the Southern leaders, who 
act for the Southern people, having become re- 
converted back from democracy to despotism, 
and seduced to repudiate the principles and to 
subvert the institutions of their fathers by the 
increasing profitableness of holding slaves. 



XX. 

PECTJLIAR QUALITIES CONFERRED ON THE MASTER OF SLAVES 
BY HIS POSITION — PRACTICAL DISPLAY OF THESE QUAL- 
ITIES. 

Such being the educational power of master- 
ship to transform the Democrat into a Despot, 
it follows that before the free institutions of our 
government can prevail again over its former 
territorial limits, not only must that source of 
the pernicious education become extinct, but 
another generation of Southerners must be edu- 
cated under different auspices. How effectually 
the few years of the present war may avail to 
displace the generation of its authors from mor- 
tal life, from political and social power, and to 
correct the vicious educating of those who are 
to succeed them in the leading places of South- 
ern politics and society, is a question that time 
alone can answer. It is not, as the London 
<* Times" affirms, that " the United States must do 
as Britain did in 1783, or govern the South as 
Eussia governs Poland." The "Times," that vile, 
subsidized tool of despots, knows, if it w^ould 
admit, that the United States occupy the same 

10* 118 



114 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

position now which they occupied in 1783, as 
the representatives and champions of free gov- 
ernment ; and now, as then, the antagonistic 
arms of despotisnl must yield before them, if 
the ^'Times'' and its august compeers cannot 
succeed in lying them into such a state of fear 
and uncertainty as to give up the contest. 

But we have not done with the practical de- 
tail of slave-holding, as it acts to mould the char- 
acter and habits of the master. 

To say that it confers a habit of command, is 
to describe but a part of that ingrained sense of 
superiority, that perfect contour of lordhness, 
which results from lifelong surveillance over a 
subject race, and which has in it much that com- 
mands respect and exerts influence among men, 
despite the absence of merit, of learning, and of 
mental grasp, and the presence of much that is 
mean, cruel, treacherous, dishonest, and unjust. 
It acts instinctively and powerfully to place its 
possessor above your criticism, above your in- 
vestigation, and to command your reverend ac- 
quiescence without consulting your judgment or 
your will. It can never be attained by study or 
assumed by direct effort. It can never be gen- 
erated or preserved in a democratic state of 
society. It must be conferred from infancy, 



MASTERING TALE^'T OF SLAVE-HOLDERS. 115 

doubtless becomes more or less hereditary, and 
acts with the spontaneous, instinctive ease, not 
of a second nature, but of a first. It results 
from lifelong habits of the successful exercise of 
dictatorial control over men. It enables its pos- 
sessor to take the first move, the vantage ground, 
the choice of position, and contributes greatly 
toward his success in all transactions with those 
wdio have it not. This kind of superiority, when 
possessed by only an individual or family, has 
produced immense effects in the Old World ; but 
when it comes to be the common heritage of an 
indefinitely extended class, as in this country, 
its full influence remains to be discovered. It 
has inclined and enabled Southern leaders so to 
husband the few political advantages they pos- 
sessed, and so to turn their very weakness to 
advantage, that they have not only put a perpet- 
ual quietus upon all movements and tendencies 
contrary to their own among their own seven 
and three-fourths millions of poor white popula- 
tion, but to exercise a controlling influence in 
our national affairs, over Northern majorities and 
a predominance of learning, talent, truth, justice, 
and consistency. So that said Southern leaders 
have had their w^ay in everything desired but in 
preventing the material progress and multiplying 
numbers of the Free States; and when they 



116 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

foimd that, by virtue of dead weight, the North 
was becoming too vast for them to handle, they, 
by virtue of the quality we are considering, se- 
lected their own time and method and circum- 
stances for terminating their connection with it. 
But, thanks to an overruling Providence, they 
have let the matter of separation alone too long. 
Although overreached, befooled, and betrayed, 
and although we commenced this contest with 
a national treasury robbed and bankrupted, ar- 
senals rifled of their contents, an army and navy 
demoralized-and depressed, and their remnants 
scattered to the ends of the earth ; though the 
national administration, for the first, time com- 
posed practically of Northern men, without an 
element of the hitherto all-controlling Southern 
leadership to give it strength, cannot conceal its 
weakness; and although, from the commence- 
ment of the war to the time of this writing, Sep- 
tember 12, 1862, our commanders in the field 
appear to have been, on the whole, extensively 
outgeneralled and baffled by that same disdain- 
ful assuming of the initiative on the part of their 
antagonists, which has baffled our congressmen 
for half a century, — yet we expect, and not 
without good reason, that by mere dead weight, 
superiority of numbers and resources, we shall 
triumph in the end. 



SOUTHERN DICTATION. 117 

It was this quality of Southern leadership, the 
result of being born and educated masters, which 
petulant Northern journalists, notwithstanding 
the wonderful power which it exerts, and the 
success of its applications, persist in denominat- 
ing "superciliousness," and "insufferable inso- 
lence," that inclined and enabled the South 
Carolina legislature with impunity to mob the 
agent (Judge Hoar) of Massachusetts sent to 
prosecute a case in the United States court at 
their capital, — that inclined and enabled Preston 
S. Brooks with impunity to cudgel Senator 
Sumner in his senatorial chair till a trifle more 
of the same treatment would have terminated 
his life, — that enabled Andrew Jackson to de- 
molish the United States Bank, and virtually to 
terminate the application of Federal appropria- 
tions to purposes of internal improvement ; and, 
under pretence of " conscientious scruples " and 
" constitutional objections," with others like him, 
his compeers and successors, to do whatever they 
deemed best adapted to cripple the strength and 
impede the prosperity of the Northern States, — 
to establish a compromise line, bounding slave 
territory on the North, when they thought such 
action for their advantage, and abolish it when 
they saw fit, — to resort to the doctrine of pop- 
ular sovereignty to abolish the Missouri Com- 



118 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

promise, thereby bringing Kansas into dispute, 
between Free State and Pro-slavery parties, and 
to resort to a military despotism to force slavery 
into it as soon as it had become disputable, — 
so perpetually to dictate the policy of the gen- 
eral government as to inhibit all acknowledg- 
ment of nationality at home or abroad, in Li- 
beria, Hayti, or elsewhere, to any people of the 
races from whom their slaves are taken, — so to 
dictate at the North the sentiments with which 
negroes shall be regarded, as to exclude them 
from the common rights of citizens and from 
military service, at the imminent risk of 
losing all we have at stake in the present war, 
in consequence of that exclusion. 



XXI. 

OTHER TRAITS OF CHARACTER CONFERRED BY HIS POSITION 
ON THE SLAVE-MASTER, FITTING HIM FOR WAR ; AND 
DISPLAYED BY HIS CLASS IN THE PRESENT CONTEST. 

Aside from the quality mentioned in the last 
chapter as resulting from lifelong presiding over 
a servile race, there are other qualities, or traits 
of character, acquired thereby, and not often 
derived from any other source. Among these 
is a certain wakeful, watchful, reconnoitring 
alertness, an instinctive, habitual quickness to 
apprehend danger, and effectually to provide 
against it, the result of being born and bred in a 
state of perpetual war, where tremendous penal- 
ties for remissness were continually pending. 

What ! it will be asked by some, is the state of 
the slave-holder a state of perpetual war ? The 
answer to this inquiry is. Yes. And the only 
qualification needed to explain the answer is, 
that the " master race " is, in general, in a state 
of complete triumphant success ; so that very 
little fighting has to be done. The only reason 
that there is not frequent and active fighting is, 
that the negroes are effectually deprived of 

119 



120 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

means and opportunities to fight with the re- 
motest probability of success. That there is just 
and sufficient cause for constant war, the negro 
and his master aUke well know. It is the disci- 
pline and practice of keeping his negroes thus 
perpetually deprived of the means and oppor- 
tunities of waging active war, that gives the 
slave-holder the habit, and at length the power, 
of examining, measuring, estimating, and com- 
prehending every man that presents himself for 
acquaintance, or for transactions with him : that 
is, he measures, estimates, and comprehends him 
so far as to arrive at an approximately certain 
conclusion as to what course of action he is likely 
to pursue, what benefits or mischiefs are likely 
to accrue to himself (the slave-holder) and to 
his cause therefrom, and how, and how far, it 
becomes incumbent on him to make provision 
against such mischiefs. 

The slave-holder also understands and acts on 
the importance of tampering with his enemy, to 
bribe and disarm his hostile feeling, and thereby 
lessen the danger and the frequency of resistful 
encounters. Every time he corrects a servant 
for misbehavior, he fights an engagement in 
the general perpetual battle, by complete suc- 
cess in which on the part of the master the 
negro race are kept against their wills in im- 



SOUTHERN SELF-PRESERVATION. 121 

plicit and profitable servitude. Another lesson, 
eminently fitting one fi)r active war, which the 
master of slaves is compelled to learn, is to take 
care of himself The war he is perpetually en- 
gaged in carrying on is not a war with equals ; 
it is war with a servile race ; and in such a war 
it would be disgracefully imprudent to allow 
himself to be injured. Hence the purpose to 
inflict a punishment, or to transfer by sale, or 
anything that is likely to rouse the negro to 
resistance, is instinctively kept an inscrutable 
secret; the negro is eyed and calculated for 
till it is seen that he is about to come into a po- 
sition where he can be captured, handcufied, and 
handled at pleasure, and without peril to the 
master. 

Hence the sly, secret, stealthy operations of 
the Southern forces in the existing war, and 
their persistent and perpetual refusal to fight, 
except where overwhelming numbers, or advan- 
tageous position, or some other advantage on 
their side appears to them to place their success 
beyond a question ; also their unparalleled and 
inimitable indifference to what all other warriors 
have esteemed to be the disgrace of fleeing be- 
fore the face of an equal foe. Hence, too, their 
torpedoes by land and sea, their bushwhacking, 
their assassination of pickets, picking off officers 
11 



122 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

in engagements, and the like, — proceedings 
which have been criticised and complained of 
by Northern men as '' outrageous," " mean," and 
" treacherous," but which result necessarily from 
the lifelong education every Southern master 
has received. Hence, also, the noteworthy suc- 
cess of the South in taking prisoners. Though 
whipped in three or four battles, where they are 
victors in one, they take more than prisoners 
enough to exchange for all they lose. 

Efficiency of action is another trait that has 
become confirmed, and, to a great extent, per- 
fected, in the character of the slave-holders as a 
class. It arises from the tremendous penalties 
of failure in dealing with their negroes, which 
penalties are continually hanging over them, and 
from habits of complete success which have for 
ages attended their labors for the subjugation of 
the Africans. Extremely few experiments are 
ever tried by this class of men. Hence their 
notorious destitution of any spirit of invention, 
and the exceeding slowness with which they 
admit the most important and most demon- 
strated improvements of the age. 

This habit of decisive action, as displayed by 
them in inaugurating and carrying on the pres- 
ent war, has been remarked and wondered at, 
ridiculed and doubted, by observers in and out 



SOUTHERN DECISIVENESS. 123 

of authority in the North, and in Europe. It 
was thought by some to augur something in 
favor of the South in reference to the final re- 
sult, and was regarded for a time by all as char- 
acteristic of this particular contest. But it is a 
characteristic habit of Southern leaders, a class 
of men who, from educational causes above-men- 
tioned, never accept of partial success unless it 
be temporarily, and as a means of achieving 
complete and final triumph in the end. 

Language is feeble to portray that absolute 
determinedness not only to succeed or perish, 
but not to be defeated when one has perished, 
which becomes habitual to the leading Southern 
mind as a necessary result of a lifelong contem- 
plation of the imminent and enormous perils of 
failure in dealing with a body of three or four 
millions of slaves, valuable and intelligent, and 
daily increasing in value and intelligence, and in 
disposition and in power to be free. The pres- 
ent onslaught on the national existence, vast as 
is the scale of its operations, presents but a fee- 
ble expose, of the infernal force that has been 
gendered and will be matured by a few gener- 
ations more of a limited class of slave-holders 
being permitted to bear the responsibilities and 
ply the functions of their vocation in the bosom 
of this otherwise democratic republic. If the 



124 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 

Korthern people or the national administration 
choose to carry on war with these men as an 
experiment, to see whether their character and 
purpose will not change under the operation, 
they can do so ; but it will be an experiment of 
transcendent costliness, and the issue of that war 
will be dictated by this unbending trait of 
Southern character. With an utterly inexhaust- 
ible fund of patient mildness on the side of the 
government, — a mildness that refuses to exter- 
minate anything, even for the salvation of its 
own confiding, imperilled, impoverished, tor- 
mented and tortured dependents, — and on the 
other side a relentless decisiveness as utterly un- 
changing ; exhaustless resources on the part of 
the former combatant can only prolong the war, 
and postpone a catastrophe which those resources 
cannot finally avert. 



XXII. 

THE FALLACY OF SUPPOSING THAT DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR CAN 
CONSTITUTE ANY PERMANENT LIMIT TO THE DESPOTIC EX- 
ERCISE OF AUTHORITY OR GREED FOR POWER ON THE PART 
OF SLAVE-MASTERS. 

One important point has been implied in the 
previous pages, which has not been explained. 

We have spoken of the despotic character ac- 
quired by the master in dealing with his slaves, 
as if the same would still attach to him in his 
dealings with white people, — we have spoken 
of the peculiarities of the particular modes of 
warfare by which he maintains his victorious su- 
premacy over the negro race, as if these same pe- 
culiarities would still characterize him in his war 
against the free North in pursuit of the liberty 
of holding other men in bondage. 

Now the Southerners and their Northern 
friends w^ill strenuously protest against this mode 
of reasoning. They will maintain most ear- 
nestly that they never intended to treat gentle- 
men, or white people, in anything like the way 
in which they are obliged to treat the blacks. 
A few months ago, this kind of talk sounded 

11* 126 



126 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

well, and gained believing listeners; and the 
dano-er is, that a few months hence, being sauced 
with a good deal of Southern blandishment, and 
seasoned with a spice of concealed Northern trea- 
son, it will again be urged on the Northern gov- 
ernment and people with some success, namely, 
that men have one character in their dealings 
with black men, and another in their dealings 
with white men, — that they may be the rank- 
est despots in their dealings with negroes, and 
the most sincere of democrats in all their rela- 
tions to the whites. We shall, doubtless, be told 
presently that it was altogether an oversight, re- 
pented of and apologized for, that during the 
heat of the contest their ideas became soinewhat 
mixed, and in language, in deeds, and in bitter 
violence of feeling, " they unfortunately identi- 
fied us with the despised negroes. And this too, 
only so far as they supposed themselves to have 
just cause to believe that we placed ourselves on 
a level with the negroes, and were really em* 
ployed in aiding them to secure their liberty by 
a servile war." 

Two considerations stand in the way of all 
this. First, we are not dealing with the admitted 
intentions of slave-holders, or of any other men. 
We are contemplating their characters, the laws 
that govern their actions, that have governed 



WHITE SKINS NO BAR TO DESPOTISM. 127 

them heretofore, and will govern them hereafter, 
whether the performers of those actions intelli- 
gently design it or not ; and never more legiti- 
mately than during the din of conflict, when 
customary disguises and artificial restraints are 
necessarily forgotten, and the roused individual 
displays his true self with more sincere honesty 
than it would have been possible for him to prac- 
tise, had he not been thrown entirely off his 
guard by the fire and strifes of war. These sin- 
cere traits of character, these laws that have 
governed and still must govern their undisguised 
conduct, were displayed by guerrilla warfare, 
masked batteries, assassination of pickets, poison- 
ing springs, and selling poisoned provisions to 
our soldiers, sequestration of the property of Un- 
ion Southerners, persecution, imprisonment, and 
hanging, of such Unionists, sinking infernal ma- 
chines to blow up our ships on the water, and 
planting torpedoes to mutilate and murder un- 
suspecting men on land, plundering and disrob- 
ing our dead on the battle-field, robbing the 
wounded of their haversacks and leaving them 
to die by starvation ; disinterring our dead to 
get their skulls for drinking-cups and their bones 
for relics, treating prisoners with wanton outrage 
and cruelty, and shooting them down in cold 
blood, — these, and a volume more of like trans- 



128 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

actions perpetrated by the Eebels in this War, 
verify beyond dispute, that the distinction made 
by slave-holders between white and black in the 
putting forth of their democratic or despotic prin- 
ciples and modes of action, is a purely fictitious 
and fanciful distinction, and wherever it is ob- 
served at all, it is so observed only for lack of 
power to enforce the cruel dictates of their ty- 
rannical principles and habits, and the desire of 
their Africanized, barbarous hearts. 

The truth is, — and this is the second objec- 
tion we bring against the pretended reasoning 
of the slave-holders and their friends, — that the 
principles and habits of despotism are supreme 
and all-moulding in their possessor. He cannot 
rid himself of their all-controlling force. As wxll 
might you plant a tree with all its roots above- 
ground, and all its leafy boughs beneath the sod, 
and expect it to flourish and bear fruit ; as well 
might you take a child of the ordinary human 
stock, in full health, and make him promise and 
swear not to grow to exceed three feet three 
inches in stature, and not to exceed fifty pounds 
in weight, as expect a man who has been born 
and bred to the exercise of despotic control over 
men, to lay by the principles and practices of 
despotism, and become an honest democratic 
member of a democratic community. He may 



DESPOTS WILL DEAL DESPOTICALLY. 120 

become such a member of such a community ; 
but it will be only in submission to a force that 
utterly precludes the possibility of his doing oth- 
erwise. And the moment that compelling, co- 
ercive force is relaxed, that moment, as a per- 
fectly elastic physical body, released from the 
force that had compressed it, springs again into 
its full former form and dimensions, so the coer- 
cively democratized despot will instinctively 
spring again into the exercise of his former 
despotic principles and habits, all the purposes 
he may have formed, all the promises he may 
have made, and all the oaths he may have 
taken, to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Not only is it the law of the human mind, — 
a law admitting of no exceptions, other than 
such as are made by compulsive force, — that 
despots will deal despotically ; but it is also such 
a law that they will do so ultimately, to the full 
extent of their ability, to the utmost limits of 
the population over whom they are able to es- 
tablish their control. And the . idea that our 
Southern despots, having three or four millions 
of blacks under their unquestioned control, 
would bound their exercise of and their greed 
for power, by the line that limits the complex- 
ion of the African skin, is one of the shallow- 



130 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

est fallacies with which a rational man ever un- 
took to deceive himself. 

Like the facility wath which wealth is accu- 
mulated, so the ease of accumulating despotic 
power increases in geometrical ratio to what is 
already possessed. 

Had the Southern tyrants had no supreme 
control over millions of blacks, they could never 
have subjugated the seven and three-fourths 
millions of poor white population. Had they 
not succeeded in establishing an absolute des- 
potic control over these millions of non-slave- 
holding whites in the Southern States, they would 
not have been able to entail on the North these 
years of bloody and exhausting war for the 
enlargement and perpetuation of their despotic 
sway. 

When the framers of the Constitution guaran- 
teed to slave-holders the perpetual, quiet pos- 
session of their increasing numbers of African 
slaves, they put into the hands of that class of 
men a weapon wherewith they could presently 
put that Constitution, with all its beneficent 
provisions, out of existence. When the rise of 
the cotton-trade gave new vitality and pecuni- 
ary power to slave-holders, it necessarily im- 
parted to them the disposition and the power 
to use that weapon. 



CONDITIONS OF PEACE. 131 

If the present war does not deprive slave-hold- 
ing of permanent vitality, so that it can never 
take root and sprout into vigorous growth again, 
then the present Avar will act on the causes 
that produced it, only as a limited amount of 
water acts on a conflagration which it suffices 
only to deaden, while it does not quench. 

The slave-holders and their apologizing friends 
tell us that " the abolitionists are the cause of 
the present war." Every man who refuses to 
bow his neck in permanent subjection to the 
Southern despots whom slavery has raised up, is 
the cause of this war by said refusal. If the 
whole Northern population had so bowed their 
necks, then would there have been no war, and 
on no other condition. On any other condition 
than that perpetual and universal submission on 
the part of the whole Northern population to 
be ruled over by the masters of the Southern 
slaves, the present war will rage, and must inev- 
itably rage, in one form or another, and at longer 
or shorter intervals, till either despotism or de- 
mocracy is exterminated frem within our coun- 
try's boundaries. 

Whether the genus Despot can be preserved 
and propagated by the subject class of the South- 
ern despotism, is a question on which there need 



132 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

be no doubt or controversy. The change of 
place from the subject to the dominant class in 
a despotic community, is a natural and easy 
change. And unless the blacks and whites of 
the subject class in the Southern States are ele- 
vated to the rank, and inspired with the princi- 
ples of equals among equals in a democratic 
community, as sure as that the dead carcass 
breeds worms, so sure is it that the dominant 
class will not long be wanting, and the despotic 
form of Southern society will be preserved, with 
more or less detriment and peril to the demo- 
cratic North. And those Northern-born and 
Northern-bred politicians who are laboring with 
intense persistency, by opposing the emancipa- 
tion war policy, to conserve the interests of 
self-immolated slave-holders, are thereby doing 
all that God has placed it in their power to 
do, to forge and fasten on their own posterity, 
and on all the freemen of the North, the same 
inhuman despotism, which, at this hour is sub- 
mitting to every Southern white man between 
the ages of sixteen and forty-five (sixty in some 
states), who is not the owner of twenty slaves, 
the cool alternative of placing himself in the 
front of a deadly fight for destroying the gov- 
ernment of his fathers, or among those who 



IMPORTANT ALTERNATIVES. 133 

are being led out by scores, and shot down like 
dogs, for not obeying their leaders * 

* Cincinnati, Sept. 15, 1863. The Gazette has a Leavenworth despatch 
which says: " Gen. Blunt at last accounts was at Fort Gibson, preparing 
to start for Fort Scott. Refugees from the I'ebel conscription are coming 
into Blunt' s lines by hundreds. Their sufferings are represented as inde- 
scribable. More than one hundred Union men have been shot and hung at 
Fort Smith since the rebellion begun." The Nashville Union of the 6th 
October, 1863, says: "It is not known, we believe, that the pi'ivilege of 
habeas corpus has been suspended altogether in the Confederacy, for over 
twelve months. "We have the highest judicial authority for stating this 
fact, although we cannot give any naine. The suspension was made by a 
private order of Jeflf. Davis to the leading judicial officers, and never has 
been published. Probably not one man in fifty thousand in all Rebeldom is 
aware that for over twelve months, the privilege of habeas corpus has not 
existed in the South at all. Our authority on this point, we repeat, is 
unquestionable." A volume might be filled with similar accounts. 



XXIII. 

RECAPITULATION — THE SEVERAL WAYS IN WHICH SLAVERY 
ACTS, TO RECONVERT MASTERS BACK FROM DEMOCRACY 
TO DESPOTISM, AND TO CONFER ON THEM WARLIKE QUAL- 
ITIES. 

We have now considered in detail, to the ex- 
tent proposed, the operation of slavery as it has 
existed since the chan2;e that was wrouo;ht in it 
after the adoption of the Constitution ; namely, its 
operation to convert back to despotism the sons 
of sires who fought, bled, toiled, and sacrificed, 
without remission and without reserve, to win 
the independence of our common country, and 
to establish within it the glorious fabric of free 
government, an achievement which has brought 
more of hope and joy and of substantial happi- 
ness to the human family than any other event 
that has occurred since the dawn of time, except 
the advent of the Christ of God. 

We have seen that slavery, in its modern 
form, necessarily concentrates such an enormous 
amount of imperilled interest, antagonistic to 
everything that pertains to freedom, as would 
overthrow a stronger government than ours, had 

134 



RECAPITULATION. 135 

not the potent cause of freedom rapidly and 
gloriously accumulated to itself an amount of 
population and resources that wellnigh out- 
weighs the available resources of the remaining 
portion of the world. We have seen that, in 
addition to vast pecuniary interest, the loose 
luxuriance of a semi-barbarous state of society, 
the intoxicating sweets of despotic SAvay, and a 
powerful practical predominance in all national 
affairs, — all which to their possessors depend 
on the maintenance of the slave system, — the 
dreaded horrors of slave insurrection are per- 
petually impending, to enforce on the " master 
class " a unity of purpose, a harmony of action, 
a subjugating of every voluntary power to the 
one ruling necessity, which is, of itself, the high- 
est, strongest, form of despotism. We have 
seen that lifelong compliance with this enforced 
necessity of despotic action must mould and 
fashion the character of the slave-holder, whether 
he will or not, with all the features of a despot. 
We have seen that the habit of command, if 
that term be used to cover the attendant pecu- 
liarities of the habit it describes, together with 
the advantages resulting to them from their 
own enforced unity of action and concentration 
of interest, has inclined and enabled a few thou- 
sand slave-holders, not only to mould and man- 



136 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

age their own seven and three-fourths miUions 
of non-slave-holding white population, like pot- 
ters' day, but, in the legislative, executive, and 
judicial branches of our national government, 
to do everything they could desire, except fa- 
tally to suppress the rapid increase of numbers 
and material prosperity at the North. 

We have seen that, aside from the direct effect 
of slave-holding to despotize the principles and 
habits of the master, the influence of negro 
associations from youth to hoary age, from gen- 
eration to generation, must have a powerful 
effect, in his comparative seclusion from other 
society, to depress and barbarize the standard 
of his civilization, — thus giving powerful collat- 
eral aid to his natural lust for gain and lust for 
despotic power ; also to disincline and unfi him 
to return to the political preferences and affec- 
tions of his fathers, and to do away with the 
compunctions he might otherwise be supposed 
to have, for using the despotic power he pos- 
sessed in a barbarous way and for barbarous 
purposes. 

A state of war is perfectly normal to a des- 
potism. It is the reverse of this to a democracy. 
So much so, that even democratic material has 
to be thrown into grades of subordinate and 



RECAPITULATION. 137 

commander, and the whole placed under a despotic 
head, before it can be called an army, or become 
at all reliable for fighting purposes. We have seen 
that a state of mastership over a subject race, as 
the negro race is held in the Southern States 
in recent years, is, and necessarily must be, a 
state of war, and calls into constant and vigorous 
exercise all those accomplishments of strategy, re- 
connoissance, inscrutable reticence, and decisive 
action, which are the highest attainments of the 
warlike leader ; while the act of corporal pun- 
ishment, which must be perpetually pending, 
and more or less frequently performed, serves to 
brutalize the finer feelings, and divest the state 
of actual war of much of the repugnance with 
which it would necessarily present itself to other 
classes of society. 



XXIV. 

ANTAGONISM OF DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY OVERT AND TAN- 
GIBLE — MILITARY ORGANIZATION AND ACTION PERFECTLY 
NATURAL AND HEALTHFUL TO A DESPOTISM, BUT DIFFI- 
CULT AND DESTRUCTIVE TO A DEMOCRACY. 

It has been stated in the foregoing pages of 
this work, that despotism and democracy, sla- 
very and free government, are inimical to each 
other, — that exterminating hostility must rage 
between them till one or the other perishes, 
wherever they coexist. 

This is not a mere antagonism of abstract 
principles. The antagonism of principle works 
itself out in concrete form ; and the different 
steps of its operation are not too secret to be 
uncovered and explained. 

In no respect is this overt antagonism more 
apparent than in the military qualities which 
despotism imparts, the military grades it im- 
poses, the military strength it relies upon, and 
the military spirit and habits which it produces ; 
while the action of democracy is the reverse of 
this in every particular. 

In monarchical government, the whole reli- 

188 



DEMOCRACY PACIFIC. 139 

ance for securing immunity from an invasion of 
national territory or rights is military strength, 
which bids defiance to the power that threatens 
wrong. As soon as wrong is threatened, mili- 
tary qualities are put in action to forestall the 
execution of that threat ; whereas, in the demo- 
cratic comanunity, the principle acted on is, that 
if there is no tension, there will be no rupture ; 
if there is no compression, there will be no ex- 
plosion. Entirely occupied in developing their 
own resources of peace, the people of a demo- 
cratic community naturally judge others by 
themselves, and suppose that every civil com- 
munity is so employed. They think little of 
the need of defence, and have no motive to 
assail. Peace is to tliem so much more profit- 
able than war, they are slow to believe that 
other nations regard their interest in a different 
light. Indeed, it is no small source of their felt 
security, that from their example of affluence, 
and from the lucrativeness of their commerce, it 
is really more profitable for their neighbor to be 
at peace than to be at war with them. The 
very contagion of their open, tolerant, and un- 
warlike feeling exerts no small influence to 
keep other nations from aggression. From the 
very constitution of society, organically des- 
titute of a watchful head or leaders who feel 



140 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

themselves habitually responsible for the wel- 
fare of the whole, it is almost impossible to 
alarm a democratic community; and still more 
difficult to obtain effective action, where action 
depends on the spontaneously harmonious move- 
ment of the headless and disintegrated mass. 
And when the democratic people do move for 
military effect, it is only by an abandoning of 
their characteristic state and modes of action, 
and adopting those of despotism, to such an ex- 
tent as to incur some danger that they will not, 
when war is over, readily return to democratic 
form. And were the object fought for any other 
than to repel an assault on their civil liberties, 
the danger would be imminent, that free princi- 
ples would be affected unfavorably by their 
course of action. So that in addition to the 
peril of being subjugated by military force, such 
is the repugnance of a state of civil freedom to 
a state of war that a democratic government is 
in imminent peril of being worried out of exist- 
ence as a democracy, by the perpetual menace 
and irritation of a despotic institution within 
its boundaries, or a despotic government located 
on its borders. 

Such a despotic government on its border, 
having, as all neighboring governments have, or 
suppose themselves to have, continually, some 



WAR DESTRUCTIVE TO DEMOCRACY. 141 

causes of complaint against its neighbor, and 
naturally and necessarily resorting to military 
menace to obtain redress and secure future re- 
spect, thereby forces on its democratic neighbor 
the necessity of frequently abandoning her nat- 
ural modes of action, of sensibly interrupting 
the lucrative employments of her citizens, to 
assume a warlike attitude and assume the grad- 
ing and the drill, and take up the weapons^ of 
despotism to repel threatened assault. 

So great is the peril from this source that 
under the supervision of divine Intelligence, no 
permanently democratic government came into 
existence until a whole broad continent had 
been prepared and set apart for its develop- 
ment, with broad and effective ocean barriers 
on every side between it and the nearest des- 
potic power. And the practical success of ocean 
steam navigation, which has brought the oppo- 
site shores of these barrier waters so near to- 
gether, was not permitted to take place until 
the democratic power on this continent had 
passed the perils of its infancy. If leading 
Southerners or their allies and abettors, the 
monarchists of Europe, are aiming, through the 
unguardedness of the present national adminis- 
tration, or the so-called Democratic party of the 
North, to subvert and finally ruin the democratic 



142 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

institutions of this country, as they doubtless 
very well understand, nothing else is necessary 
to that result but the recognition of a Southern 
government, founded on slavery as its capital 
institution. 



XXV. 

SAME GENERAL SUBJECT CONTINUED — THE POOR WHITES OF 
A SLAVE-HOLDING COMMUNITY EQUIVALENT TO A STAND- 
ING ARMY, WHEN CONTRASTED WITH THE DESTITUTION OF 
COMBATANTS WHICH MARKS A DEMOCRACY. 

The overt antagonism of monarchy to free 
government, bodied forth by the slave interest 
in the South, against the active freedom of the 
Northern portion of this country, is, perhaps, in 
nothing more apparent than in the idleness it 
induces in the great majority of the Southern 
whites. This is done, in part, by rendering labor 
disreputable, — throwing a stench of sei-vility, an 
air of degradation, about industrial pursuits, fol- 
lowed for the honest earning of one's livelihood. 

It is done, in part, by rendering labor unne- 
cessary to the whites. The mild climate, with 
scarcely any winter, reduces the list of absolutely 
necessary things for one to live on, to a very 
small number and amount. The abundance 
with which these are produced, under a South- 
ern sun, makes them easily attained. The great 
profit of slave-labor leaves much to be disposed 
of by the slave-holder gratuitously to friends 

143 



144 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

and dependents, and semi-gratuitoisly to all who 
need. The characteristic and habitually easy 
handling, by the masters, of what their negroes 
earn, serves to throw an odor of niggardliness on 
the small earnings and savings of one who works 
with his own hands. The same result is still 
farther promoted by the monopolizing of the 
land, and of the production of the great staples 
of trade by the wealthy slave-owner, leaving 
very scanty resources for the white man to 
spend his industry on, unless he goes with the 
negroes into the field, for negro wages, which 
almost none will do. 

The result is, that the poor whites, who con- 
stitute the immense majority of the whole South- 
ern population, lie perpetually in unconfined 
idleness, with nothing to lose, and little to 
fear, from any change of circumstances; ever 
ready, at the shortest notice, to be constituted 
into a military force, without pay or rations, 
to be precipitated upon any offending or unof- 
fending neighbor, at the option of their natural 
leaders, the slave-holders ; thus constituting a 
force but few removes from a standing army, 
perpetually menacing those, who, being demo- 
crats, must necessarily be hated by the despotic 
slave-holders. 

The full force of this standing menace is not 



SOLDIERS HARD TO RAISE IN A DEMOCRACY. 145 

perceived until the peculiar character of the 
community against which it is directed is brought 
to view. It is a community of preeminently 
industrious, thriving, individuals. The pressure 
of dictatorial authority, ancl its hampering institu- 
tions, has long since been removed. With almost 
the freedom of the savage state are combined the 
refined enlightenment, the upward aspirations, 
and the susceptibility of being injured, peculiar 
to the highest civilization. The humblest indi- 
vidual in that community, excepting a few who 
are a prey to rare vices or misfortunes, has the 
prospect of easy competency, and an open road, 
if he chooses to follow it, to positions of the 
highest social eminence. The consequence is, 
that there is hardly a class, however small, who 
can be spared to take up arms, and meet the 
standing menace of the South. Whoever does 
this has, in most instances, to leave a sufferino; 
family and a neglected business. Our own mer- 
chant marine cannot be manned without draw- 
ing largely on the aid of foreigners. Except a 
few for officers, our native-born citizens can be 
better employed. When the worst has come, 
and an army must be raised to defend the North, 
in the absence of despotic coercion to enforce 
sacrifice, enormous outlays must be incurred in 
wages, bounties, subsistence, and pensions, to fill 

13 



146 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

the army ranks with men, who are accustomed 
to every comfort, and to the enjoyment of more 
or less accumulated and still accumulating wealth. 
Aside from the enormous public expense, to 
induce the enlistment of these men, and the 
pecuniary sacrifice that many of them still make 
by enlisting, they feel it to be a great sacrifice 
to leave their quiet and happy homes, for the 
perils and privations inseparable from a cam- 
paign ; whereas, the Southern ranks, by a simple 
authoritative decree, are filled with men who 
have nothing to leave, and nothing to peril, but 
the semi-enjoyment of a degraded, ignorant, and 
poverty-stricken existence, by being drafted into 
a Southern army, without pay, subsistence, or 
clothing, to any considerable amount, beyond 
what they can supply themselves with, or plun- 
der from friends or foes,=^ and all at the bid of 
despots whose dictation they are almost " un- 
gifted with any ability to resist," — The North, 

* " Many a Northern man, of the pickets especially, has been killed for 
his clothes." — Army correspoiulent. 

A correspondent of the Lowell Neios, who has lately escaped from Savan- 
nah, tells the following story : — 

" After the assault on Fort Wagner, when Colonel Shaw was killed, a 
rebel soldier was showing his boots in Savannah, and bragging how he got 
them. He said he attempted to take them off a Yankee soldier on that fatal 
field, who, though wounded, remonstrated, saying there were dead ones 
enough from whom he might take a pair. Then, with a fiendish exultation, 
he went on to say how he thought he woulchi't rob the wounded, so, putting 
his bayonet through the man's heart, he took the boots and came away. If 
devils ever dance, that fellow should be counted in, boots and all.'* 



SLAVERY AND DEMOCRACY INCOMPATIBLE. 147 

at the same time, not -only having no competent 
leaders, but, from the construction and habits of 
its society, being ahnost incapable of producing 
leaders competent to conduct its affairs, in a 
state of war, to any satisfactory result. 

Under these circumstances, aside from the in- 
delible disgrace, enfeeblement, and humiliation, 
of parting with a needed portion of our national 
domain, to permit the establishment of a slave- 
holding confederacy on the borders of this re- 
public would be about as bald a suicide as a 
nation of idiots could commit. 

A perpetual series of alarms, which the lead- 
ers of such a confederacy would instinctively 
be raising, at no cost to themselves, and for mere 
amusement, would, in a few years, worry the 
Northern democratic government out of exist- 
ence, by keeping it in a state of afflicted uncer- 
tainty, more disastrous to its delicate and varied 
industrial and commercial interests than actual 
war. No sane man can pretend that treaties 
with such a confederacy Vv^ould avail any more 
than did the of&cial oaths of the traitor senators, 
congressmen, and cabinet officers, who gendered 
it. 



XXVI. 

VIEW OF THE ALTERED CONDITION OP AFFAIRS IN 1860, COM- 
PARED WITH 1789 — WAS THE PRESENT PRECIPITATION OF 
HOSTILITIES NECESSARY? — AS VIEWED BY NORTHERN MEN, 
IT WAS NOT — AS VIEWED BY SOUTHERN MEN, IT WAS. 

In the light of the foregoing reflections, we 
are, perhaps, prepared to make some just esti- 
mate of the real and immediate causes of the 
existing war. In attempting to do so, we find 
that natural history is encroaching more nearly 
than before on the boundaries of history proper ; 
and the natural causes which we have hitherto 
been tracing in their action, irrespectively of 
any human design or intelligent purpose, will 
henceforth be bodying themselves forth in the 
intelligent purpose and resolute action of the 
prime movers of this nefarious Rebellion. 

Slavery, as we now are called to look upon it, 
has advanced from the state of unimportance 
and of non-influence in which it did not interfere 
with the declaration of our independence, or the 
adoption of our national Constitution, in 1776- 
'89, to a condition of all-moulding influence and 
incalculable pecuniary importance, in 1860. It 

148 



INFLUENCE OF SLAVERY IN i860. 149 

has moulded Southern society into the grades 
of despotism. It has reduced the mass of non- 
slave-holding whites to a state of degraded igno- 
rance and poverty, bereft of any capacity or 
disposition to controvert the authority of any- 
body who may assume to dictate to them. It 
has, by its necessary action, moulded the senti- 
ments and habits of the master, to the purest, 
fiercest form of despotism, reversing the demo- 
cratic character and devotion of his illustrious 
sires, and putting him under the pressure of 
pecuniary and social influences adequate to dis- 
pel all hesitancy as to maintaining his present 
position. He has retained just enough of de- 
mocracy to serve as a rule of harmonious action 
between himself and his fellow-despots, as they 
serve together, with one heart and one mind, in 
profound obedience to the dictates of their one 
consolidated interest. The practice of holding 
slaves has conferred on him almost all the qual- 
ities of a military strategist and leader, in a 
high degree ; has done much to divest him of 
any aversion to a state of war, and he has be- 
come conscious of his irresponsible sway over 
the mass of poor whites in his own section. 

The practice of slave-holding has also conferred 
on the master the faculty of controlling, and its 
stringent necessities have supplied him with an 



150 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

efficient motive to control the policy, and, to a 
great extent, the action, in detail, of the general 
government. 

The question here presents itself, demanding 
to be answered, whether natural causes, at this 
time, necessitated a precipitation of the armed 
conflict. Had the antagonistic principle of des- 
potism, as prevailing *at the South, so far ex- 
pressed itself in overt injury and annoyance as 
to force the North into armed resistance ? Or 
had the material and numerical progress of the 
North rendered it unsafe for the South longer to 
count on her forbearance ? 

Looking at the question from a Northern po- 
sition, and with the mild, tolerant eye of a Dem- 
ocrat, there was, at this time, no necessity of a 
rupture. Innocently supposing others to be as 
open and honest as themselves, fully occupied 
by their several schemes of individual aggran- 
dizement, the Northern politicians had never 
extended their investigations so far as to discover 
that there was working in the South a govern- 
mental principle, potent, vital, and aggressive, 
inimical to their spirit and practices of freedom. 
That the Constitution bound them to non-inter- 
ference with slavery in the States was univer- 
sally admitted. And had the South been satisfied 
with this, and with the lenient exercise of their 



SOUTHERN LEADERS NEVER TRUST. 151 

own predominance in the general administration, 
no class or number of alarmists could have roused 
the North to acts of overt hostility. 

But look at the same question from a South- 
ern point of view, with the eye of a tyrant's 
jealousy and suspicion, as he stands surrounded 
by the imminent and enormous perils of servile 
insurrectionary disturbance, beneath the shadow 
of a vast and growing governmental force, 
imbued with the spirit of democracy, and neces- 
sarily inimical to the despotic system which he 
has wrapped about him till he could not rid him- 
self of it if he would, and a different answer had 
to be given. To wield the political influence, and 
to conserve the interests of concentrated slavery, 
devolved on men who never trusted in anything 
which they could not control, never asked for 
anything which they could not exact, never 
commended any course of action which they 
could not compel. Their character was the ne- 
cessary result of their education. Hardly any- 
body, that had not been trained on the deck of 
a pirate or of a slave-ship, could be expected to 
comprehend their motives, or to predict their 
course of action. 



XXVII. 

LEADING SOUTHERNERS DETERMINE TO DIVIDE THE UNION — 
THIRTY YEARS SPENT IN MATURING AND PREPARING TO EX- 
ECUTE THE DETERMINATION — STEPS TAKEN TO THAT END. 

Although, in the early history of the govern- 
ment, the Southern or Slave States outweighed 
the North in territorial extent and population, 
yet it soon became apparent that the principles 
of free government, as carried out at the North, 
were operating to develop the resources of that 
section to an unparalleled degree, and were secur- 
ing to it almost the entire influx of foreign pop- 
ulation. Its territorial expansion, which could 
not be checked, could only be equalled for a 
time by a forced expansion on the part of the 
South. 

This constantly augmenting preponderance 
on the part of the North never escaped the no- 
tice or due consideration of leading Southern- 
ers. They were for thirty years counting on 
the hour when their domination in the general 
government would be hopelessly outweighed, 

and the temporizing shifts to which they long 

162 



EARLY PURPOSE TO DIVIDE THE UNION. 153 

resorted to keep up their practical predomi- 
nance could no longer be relied on. They had 
taken these thirty years to deliberate on the 
course they would pursue in the foreseen emer- 
gency; with characteristic reticence they had 
concealed their conclusion, and taken all the 
preparatory steps necessary to carry their pur- 
pose into execution. The repugnance tHat ex- 
isted between their owm system and wdiat they 
were sometimes pleased to call the " agrarian- 
ism " -^ of the North, they had deeply pondered 
and justly weighed. 

The continued coexistence of the two antag- 
onistic forces w^ithin the limits of one govern- 
ment, they never w^ere stupid enough to ex- 
pect. 

From the time that the profitable expansion 
of the business of producing cotton became 
an admitted fact, they had turned their backs 
irrevocably on all projects looking toward eman- 
cipation, or tow\ard any considerable relaxation 
of the rigor of the slave-system as then prac- 
tised. 

* The practical abandonment of those class distinctions without which 
a monarchical form of society has no existence. And, as a real monarchist 
never admits, never even conceived of, the existence of government with- 
out sovereigns, one or more, " agrarianism " is a mild expression to de- 
scribe the anarchy, the utter absence of all government, which he necessa- 
rily supposes to exist where there is no governing class. 



154 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 

Nothing remained to them but prospective 
separation from the Federal Union/^ 

Men of their antecedents and surroundings, 
of their character, and in their circumstances, 
could have come to no other conclusion. Noth- 
ing remained contingent but the time and mode 
of bringing the separation about. Thus the 
minds of leading Southern men were educated 
for a generation under the influence of the de- 
liberate purpose to establish a separate Southern 
government. Nor was this the educating influ- 
ence of a mere idle purpose. The revolution 
that separated Texas from Mexico was a bold 
and successful step, planned and executed hy 
Southern adventurers in aid of that design. 
The subsequent admission of Texas to the Un- 
ion, the consequent war with Mexico, and the 
acquisition of New Mexico, California, and Ari- 
zona, were all so many successive steps brought 
about in obedience to the same design. 

* Once out from under the national Constitution, with four or more mil- 
lions of blacks in utter subjugation, and eight or more millions of whites 
whom they can shoot and hang with impunity, with half the former na- 
tional ten-itory and coast whereon to raise armies and navies, with the ac- 
knowledged right to make foreign alliances and treaties, without any nat- 
ural boundary between their territory and the Northern States, these men 
never doubted their governmental ability to keep the North so perpetually 
in hot water, as effectually to check its material progress, and to teach its 
money-eammg, money-saving population, that not only black men but 
white men "have no rights which" a slave-holding cotton lord "is bound 
to respect." 



STEPS EARLY TAKEN TOWARD SEPARATION. 155 

The incurring of enormous debts (perhaps 
only constructively) by the State of Texas, to 
certain of her citizens, and the subsequent as- 
suming of these debts by the general govern- 
ment, constituted, perhaps, one of the first of 
a series of acts, designed to impoverish the 
North, or the general government, preparatory 
to the coming separation. 

The writer of these pages was personally cog- 
nizant of the fact, that eighteen years before 
the civil disturbances in Kansas took place, un- 
der the administration of President Pierce, it 
was the plan of leading slave-holders to " bring 
the question of the extension of slavery, to an 
issue of arms on some territory external to the 
jurisdiction of any State government." It was 
presumed that Northern men would not fight, 
and that slight demonstrations of prowess on 
the part of Southerners would enable the latter 
to have matters all their own way. It was a 
refinement on this original design, to have the 
general government, in the hands of Southern 
men, with such an automaton as Frank Pierce 
in the executive chair, make armed demonstra- 
tions in behalf of slave extension, with a view, 
if possible, to betray the freedom-loving North 
into acts of overt hostility against the Federal 
government, and bring on a war against slavery, 



156 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

with the treasury, the authority, the army and 
navy of the general government on the South- 
ern side in the conflict. 

The outrages committed against the Free- 
State men and their property, Hves, and famihes 
in Kansas, were not accidental ; they were a 
part of the regular plan, ordered and insisted 
on from headquarters, in furtherance of the 
above design. But with the hanging of John 
Brown and his associates, this part of the pro- 
gramme failed ; except so far as its prosecution 
had availed to ferment animosity between the 
Northern and Southern people; to supply ma- 
terial for misrepresenting the North in Southern 
sections, and to supply the occasion for getting 
up and exercising some martial spirit among 
the people of Virginia.'-' 

Kindred to these operations for bringing the 
North into overt conflict with the general gov- 
ernment, was the plan of packing the supreme 
bench of the United States Court, with a view 
to obtain decisions so outrageously violative of 
the principles of free-government, as to weary 
out the patience of the Northern people and 
exasperate them beyond control. 

* It was of very great importance to the success of their subsequent de- 
signs, civil and nailitary, that the Southern leaders should have this occa- 
sion to bring their own abject underlings through the surprise and repug- 
nance of a first taking-up of arms. 



ATTEMPTS TO IRRITATE THE NORTH. 157 

This packing of the United States Court com- 
menced as far back as the appointment of 
Roger B. Taney to a seat upon its bench, as a 
reward for his subserviency in removing the 
treasury deposits from the United States Bank, 
an act of doubtful legahty, which his predeces- 
sor in the treasury department refused to do, 
in obedience to General Jackson's imperious 
and unreasonable mandate. 

The framing of the Fugitive Slave Law, with 
features of needless harshness, was also planned 
with a view to irritate the North into acts of 
violence against the general government. 



12* 



XXYIII. 

ORIGIN AND OBJECT OF THE PRO-SOUTHERN POLITICAL PARTY 
UNDER JACKSON. 

The annexing of territory to the South and 
West, with a view to increase the territorial pre- 
ponderance of the slave section, and favor the 
multiplication of Slave States, the depletion 
of the United States treasury, to add absolute 
and comparative wealth to the South, the bring- 
ing of the slavery controversy to an issue of 
arms on the territory, the planned and perpe- 
trated enormities on the Free-State settlers in 
Kansas, and the needless harshness of the Fugitive 
Slave Law, with other like efforts to irritate the 
North into acts of overt hostility to the general 
government, while that government was yet in 
the hands of Southern leaders, and the packing 
of the United States Court, were all measures 
of secondary importance, compared with the 
grand scheme of corrupting, dividing, and pre- 
occupying the North, b}^ means of the so-called 
Democratic party. This qualified term is here 
used to designate this important political frater- 

158 



TWO EABLY POLITICAL PARTIES. 159 

nity, not as an expression of disrespect, but be- 
cause their favorite self-applied titles, Democracy 
and Democratic, cannot be here appropriated as 
they have been wont to use them, without doing 
irreparable violence to the vocabulary of history- 
Soon after the close of the Revolutionary War, 
two great parties developed themselves among 
the constituency and leading statesmen of the 
Union. Difference of opinion and of preference, 
respecting the degree to which governmental 
power should be centralized in the general ad- 
ministration, to the disparagement of State or- 
ganizations, appears to have been the chief 
ground of difference on which these party com- 
binations first took their rise. With different 
degrees of intensity in the cohesion with which 
their several elements united, with some variet}^, 
and even interchange of the names by which, 
at different periods, these parties were severally 
designated, and with more or less change, from 
time to time, in the distinctive principles, or 
political creeds, on which they claimed to found 
the different courses of governmental action 
which they severally advocated, these two great 
political parties continued till the time of Jack- 
son's administration. 

This appears to have been, more than any 



160 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

other, the period of a commencing transition in 
the condition of our national affairs, — a com- 
mencing transition from a state of comparative 
feebleness and peril to a state of conscious and 
defiant strength, — of commencing transition 
from a state of debt-incumbered national poverty 
and enforced economy to a state of conscious 
pecuniary ease and affluence, which, perhaps 
inevitably, begets looseness, extravagance, and 
corrupt procedures. 

The individual character of President Jackson 
himself, also, had much to do with the impress 
his eight years' administration left on the coun-. 
try in general, and on the political party which 
sustained him in particular. Bold and energetic 
in the extreme, by birth and education a South- 
erner of the western type, proud of that frank- 
ness and honesty which does much to gild and 
give eclat even to the strongest vices, a soldier, 
accustomed to camp habits and successful cam- 
paigns, he never shrunk from the assumption of 
any responsibility which he thought there was 
occasion to exercise ; confessedly a stranger to 
any higher virtues than unbounded devotion to 
his friends, and an exterminating vindictiveness 
toward those whom he viewed as enemies, per- 
haps the most remarkable feature of his char- 
acter was an unguarded susceptibility of being 



GEN. JACKSON AND HIS POLITICAL PARTY. 161 

imposed upon by those who succeeded in main- 
taining in his presence a friendly attitude. 

His bold, frank, energetic, and decided char- 
acter gave confidence and strength to his politi- 
cal adherents, who never allowed themselves to 
be embarrassed with cumbering creeds, or polit- 
ical doctrines, that did not work well for the 
time being ; his military renown proved to be 
a profitable basis on which to erect political 
reputation ; his gallant quashing of South Caro- 
lina's insane and ill-timed attempt at nullifying 
the acts of the general government, by an as- 
sumption of supreme power on behalf of the 
individual State, made him stand well at the 
North, while his supreme rule of favoring his 
friends, and disfavoring his opponents, led him 
to prostitute the vast and growing patronage of 
the general executive office to reward the servi- 
ces of all who had contributed to his individual 
or party success. 

James Buchanan, whose aid had, perhaps, 
availed to turn the doubtful presidential election 
in Jackson's favor, and who, to accomplish this, 
had perfidiously turned against his bosom friend 
and former patron, the opposing candidate, was 
unblushingly invited to reward himself with the 
honors and emoluments of a choice embassy. 
The present chief justice of the Supreme Court, 



162 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

as before remarked, was given this place as a 
reward for services of doubtful legality, which 
his more honorable predecessor in the secretary- 
ship of the treasury would not sell himself to 
perform. The ablest graduates of the naval 
and military academies were compelled to resign, 
or take rank under idle, worthless boys, and 
used-up politicians, whose only claim on prefer- 
ment was, that they or their friends had contrib- 
uted to the success of the Jackson party. 

The result was, a powerful political organiza- 
tion, having for its ruling principle the acquisi- 
tion and retaining of office for the sake of its 
patronage, and this patronage to be distributed 
as the reward of party services. 



XXIX. 

THE CHARACTEEISTIC PKINCIPLES OF JACKSON'S POLITICAL 
PARTY. 

The scantiness of the public revenue, and the 
pressure of the pubUc debt, had till now enforced 
a frugality that had kept the offices of the gen- 
eral government eminently clear of the herd of 
cormorants, that, like carrion crows about a pu- 
trid carcass, persist in cursing with their pestif- 
erous presence the government whose abun- 
dant resources are fitted to gratify their insa- 
tiate and undiscriminating appetites. The conse- 
quence was that ability and faithfulness to pub- 
lic trust were the practical and recognized pass- 
ports to not over-paying offices. But now, a 
plethoric treasury, ample resources, a practi- 
cally extinguished national debt, the vast and 
increasing number of public functionaries, called 
for by the rapidly-increasing area of settled ter- 
ritory, all contributed to render the period of 
Jackson's administration preeminently tempting 
for the ingress of a plundering horde to the 
multiplied, and still multiplying subordinate offi- 
ces in the gift of the chief executive. 

168 



164 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

To this peculiarity of the times, add the pe- 
culiarity of President Jackson's personal charac- 
ter as put forth in the aphorism which he un- 
blushingly established as a ruling law in respect 
to political contestants, — " To the victors belong 
the spoils/' — and we have only to attribute to 
the community around him an ordinary amount 
of corruptibiHty, in order to predicate of his po- 
litical adherents, and of his and their successors, 
qualifications for office and deportment in office, 
exactly the reverse of what characterized their 
predecessors. 

From this time forward, the grand aim and 
study of every political man necessarily became, 
first, the art of controlling voters ; and second, 
the art of counteracting the efforts of rivals 
similarly employed. 

Perhaps the purgatorial fires of the present 
war, and the enormous incumbrance of the re- 
sulting war-debt, are the easiest, and the only 
agencies capable of reversing the prevalent 
prostitutions of political functions, that have 
been induced under the late succession of so- 
called Democratic administrations. 

A galaxy of preeminently able statesmen, 
who defended the national interests at that 
time, coerced the administration into some de- 
cent regard for appearances. This induced con- 
cealment of those corruptions which would 



POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 165 

otherwise have shocked the moral sense of a 
hitherto comparatively virtuous people ; * and, 
it also led to the deeper and more thorough 
planting of the principles to which the then 
prevalent party owed its strength; so that a lon- 
ger time was secured for the germinating of 
those principles, and the people were gradually 
and insensibly accustomed- to practices of politi- 
cal fraud from Avhich they would otherwise have 
strongly revolted. 

Those statesmen were occupied in defending 
the Constitution and the first principles of the 
government, from assaults that came thick and 
fast upon them, under the august profession of 
the policy of the administration ; while in fact 
said assaults were really a blind, to divert atten- 
tion from what was really the policy of the ad- 
ministration, namely, the prostituting of all the 
powers of government to j^arty purposes, — to 
the emolument and immunity of that line of 
succession which was to be filled with the most 
active and least-principled individuals who should 
rise to the surface in that polluted caldron, the 
so-called Democratic organization. 

*Not far from the close of Jackson's administration, tlie buildings of both 
the Post Office and Treasury Departments were destroyed by fire. And as 
one or both were fire-proof buildings, and much of the evidence of fraudu- 
lent governmental dealing was commonly known in the vicinity, little doubt 
was entei'tained by citizens residhig thereabout, that the fires were set inten- 
tionally on the inside, to destroy the record of such deaLLns;. 



166 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

Had this principle been discerned and dem- 
onstrated in the first place, and held up before 
the public gaze till the last, to the exclusion of 
all other issues, its disastrous operation might, 
perhaps, to some extent, have been averted. 
But the fatal error of the able men who de- 
fended the Constitution and the interests of the 
country, was, to join issue with their opponents 
upon various political questions, and argue their 
time, breath, and power, aAvay on these, while 
the real source of danger was almost undis- 
cerned and unresisted ; and, as for the particular 
political questions argued, the so-called Demo- 
cratic leaders would adopt or abandon any and 
all of them as best suited their one ruling aim. 
Perhaps with the increasing resources and 
necessarily increasing expenditures of the gov- 
ernment, an air of lavish looseness would have 
crept in, under an executive of the most frugal 
principles. But to anticipate the coming change 
from poverty to afiluence, to obtain the reins 
of government at this particular juncture, and 
so dispose of all the patronage at command, 
both legitimate and factitious, as to lay the 
foundations deep and broad for perpetuating 
power in that particular party, by systematic 
corruption, — this was the function of the Loco- 
foco, or so-called Democratic, organization, and 
displays its inimitable genius. 



XXX. 

SOME OF THE MODES IN WHICH THESE PRINCIPLES OPERATED. 

Under the administration of General Jackson, 
during two successive terms of four years each, 
followed immediately by that of Van Buren, the 
Vice-president of his second term and the suc- 
cessor of his choice, whose avowed ambition it 
was to " follow in the footsteps of his illustrious 
predecessor," the characteristic principle and pol- 
icy of the party of w^hich these two men may 
with propriety be said to have been the founders, 
became confirmed and influential beyond the 
reach of permanent and successful resistance. 
Some of the details of its operation require to 
be examined. 

First : its effects upon the political periodical 
press were such as to command the devotion at 
first of a large and influential number, and event- 
ually, of a large majority, of the newspapers, 
which were almost the only source of political 
information for the people, especially in the older 
of the Northern States. This devotion was 
evinced by such a universal and persistent sup- 
pression of whatever was damaging, such a mag- 

167 



168 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

nificent presentation of whatever was favorable 
to the party, such a warping and falsification of 
current history, that a discriminating and disin- 
terested foreigner, attached to one of the lega- 
tions at Washington, on inquiring of one of 
Van Buren's friends for the best journal of their 
party, felt himself compelled to reject every- 
thing that could be brought forward, as unfit to 
be read by any fair-minded man. It was the 
policy of the leaders of this party, to keep it as 
isolated and distinct as possible. Its voters were, 
as far as practicable, inspired with feelings of 
animosity toward all political opponents, and 
with feelings of intolerance for any version of 
facts, other than such as emanated from their 
own party press. Under these circumstances, 
the operation of such a party periodical litera- 
ture could not be difficult to predict. It must 
put an enormous despotic power into the hands 
of those who, by controlling the patronage of 
the general government, dictated the utterances 
of that party press. It must have educated, 
and it did edu'cate, the common voters of that 
party, unquestioningly and unwaveringly, to sub- 
mit to whatever of dictation came to them 
through their recognized party leaders. These 
leaders they were induced to regard as the only 
true and trusty patriots and statesmen, while all 



POLITICAL PERVERSIONS. 169 

besides were fools and knaves. Their love of 

COUNTRY WAS THUS TRANSMUTED INTO LOVE OF PARTY, 

and many of them were brought sincerely to 
believe that the sum of all impending public 
calamities would inevitably follow the transfer 
of the treasury keys to other than the hands of 
their own party magnates. The editors of these 
partisan journals were led to expect, and, for the 
most part, were eventually made to experience, 
that it was not unprofitable to serve their politi- 
cal masters. 

At the South, and in portions of the Western 
States, where the common people were less edu- 
cated, less was done by the press, and more by 
popular orators. These were indoctrinated, and 
toned by their chiefs, and made in their sev- 
eral localities to perform the functions else- 
where assigned to a subsidized and imprinci- 
pled press. 

Second: in pursuance of the same general 
party policy, and by the application of similar 
instrumentalities, the foreign-born population 
were taken hold on, and their political influence 
secured to a cause about which they knew noth- 
ing, but that its adherents flattered their preju- 
dices, pandered to their vices, talked more loudly 
in favor of licentious freedom, and dealt out to 
them more of the dictation to which they had 

16 



170 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

been accustomed in tlieir native monarchies, 
than anybody else presumed to do. 

Third : the terms Democracy and Democratic 
were made, with some success, to play a magnifi- 
cent part in covering up and denying the real 
attitude and aims of the fraternity; while the 
general plan was adopted of bringing into the 
connection not only the foreign-born, but all the 
loivevy less intelligent, more vicious, hlind, and violent 
portions of the zvJiole ijopulation, and of arrajjing them 
in hostile prejudice against the more principled, intelli- 
gent, and discreet, dubbing the latter as aristo- 
crats. 

The plan of appropriating the United States 
revenues as a reward for party services operated 
with such effect that the party often found itself 
in such undisputed power as to be able to resort 
to some obviously iniquitous and injurious dis- 
plays of power, for the purpose of driving from 
its ranks the more intelligent and conscientious 
portion of the people, of bringing upon itself 
such opposition as would serve as a pretext for 
inspiring its own blind adherents with increased 
degrees of party violence and hate, and thus 
widening the difference, and aggravating the hos- 
tility that prevailed between those who were 
within and those who were without the bounda- 
ries of this party organization. This made the 



PARTY ENGINEERING. 171 

position of their own office-holding, office-seeking, 
adherents more obviously distinct and desperate, 
and had the effect of obtaining from them more 
desperate and persevering exertions to perforjn 
their assigned part of carrying the elections. 

Fourth : applying improved modes of carrying 
important elections became an important branch 
of occupation for the ablest minds in the frater- 
nity. Executive abilities of the highest order 
were called into exercise in this department. The 
subordination of parts was rendered as complete 
almost as in a mihtary organization. Writing 
and speaking abilities of the highest order were 
employed and paid for. A fixed per centage 
on their salaries was regularly exacted from 
those who enjoyed the gift of salaried offices in 
the services of the government ; contracts for 
government supplies and services were so man- 
aged as to yield immense sums for party pur- 
poses, and when these sources of supply were 
insufficient, magnificent defalcations were now 
and then resorted to. 

Such was the state of self-control and disci- 
pline, throughout the party, that a sublime reti- 
cence sometimes marked the incubation of their 
most desperate and decisive operations. 

The surveying of the whole field of contest, 
and the husbanding of resources, so as to neglect 



172 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

all those parts where their own party was so 
strong as to make success certain without e£fort, 
and also those parts where the opposition was 
so strong as to render effort hopeless, and centre 
all available influences on those few fulcral 
points where defeat would be fatal to the party 
sustaining it, is one of the highest attainments 
that had been advanced to, by this colossal com- 
bination of perverted governmental powers, 
prostituted to the perpetuation of power in a 
corrupt political party organization. 

It is in violent struggles to carry such limited 
localities which exert a decisive influence on 
extensive elections, that fraud, perjury, and cor- 
rupt practices were more frequently resorted to. 

At a certain time, not far from the close of 
General Jackson's second official term, while the 
administration party and their opponents were 
very nearly balanced in the lower house, the 
seat of a member from Pennsylvania fell vacant, 
perhaps by death. An election was held to fill 
that vacancy. It was of very great importance 
to the administration party to carry that election. 
The people of Pennsylvania, despite the falsifica- 
tions of the party press and speakers, knew 
themselves to have been damaged to the extent 
of many millions of dollars by recent acts of the 
executive, in depriving their iron works of the 



A SPECIMEN. 173 

benefit of a protective tariff, and in destroying 
the United States Bank, which had always been 
in their chief city. Hence it was known that 
the vote in the vacant district would be heavily 
against the administration. 

John B. Clark, at that time a carriage-maker 
of Gettysburg, Pa., an active politician of the 
administration party, — who afterwards removed 
to southern Missouri, was there elected to Con- 
gress for two or three successive terms, took a 
prominent part in defeating the election of Sher- 
man of Ohio to the speakership of the second 
Congress of Buchanan's term, and was afterward 
expelled from the House for being in arms 
aorainst the o-overnment at the battle of Boon- 
ville, — took an active part in carrying the elec- 
tion to fill the above-named vacancy in Pa., of 
which, some years afterwards, he gave the pres- 
ent writer the following account : " We imported 
voters from Baltimore, New York, and Quebec ; 
some of them we boarded on expense for weeks, 
or perhaps months, before the election. Some 
of the smartest of them voted four times in one 
day, and perjured themselves every time, and 
we paid them for it." Clark also went on to 
describe the process by which the State elections 
were systematically controlled by party leaders 
of the same dye, and the expenses of the opera- 
is* 



174 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

tion defrayed from the profits of a preconcerted 
plan of colluding to plunder the public treasury. 

A volume might be filled with authentic 
accounts of similar transactions, (perhaps instead 
of a volume I should have said a library,) but 
this must suffice as a specimen/^ 

While such transactions were being carried 
on, the administration press was hurling such a 
storm of abuse and vilification on their oppo- 
nents as to lead disinterested persons to sup- 
pose that whatever of the above and like his- 
toric truth was uttered by those opponents was 
so uttered under the excitement of irritated 
feeling, and to repel assault. 

* See Appendix E. 



XXXI. 

RESULTS OF THE OPERATION OF THE ABOVE-NAMED PRIN- 
CIPLES. 

The common masses of a political party, thus 
combined and dealt with, must of necessity be 
rapidly preparing to become the instrument of 
anything its leaders see fit to employ it about ; 
whether the enterprise be the consummation of 
some gigantic treason against the government, 
or whether it be the more quiet and protracted 
process of controlling the elections and appro- 
priating the public revenues for the benefit of 
their party leaders. But the effects which such 
a party organization, so combined and controll- 
ed, must produce, beyond the boundaries of its 
own enclosure, deserve examination. 

That portion of the community who least 
appreciate the sacredness or worth of the elec- 
tive franchise, together with those of more intel- 
ligence who are least disposed to see that fran- 
chise guarded and preserved, constitute the com- 
bination, which, from its preeminent strength 
and efficiency, as well as from its being the first 

175 



176 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

of its kind, deserves to be designated the 'party. 
Those who are outside the boundaries of this 
party organization suddenly find themselves ex- 
cluded from almost all voice and participation in 
the affairs of government. The limits which 
patriotism, self-respect, common justice, and fair 
dealing have hitherto set to party violence and 
usurpation have been spurned and disregarded 
by their opponents. By means before unheard- 
of and unsuspected, the casual majority of the 

hour HAVE CHANGED THEIR TRANSIENT ASCENDENCY 
INTO A PERMANENT USURPATION OF THE REINS OF 

GOVERNMENT; and those who are left outside of 
the usurping party have nothing left for them 
to do but to pay taxes. Their only alternative 
is, to organize and attempt to operate a rival 
party. This they attempt to do. 

But they are not equal to their teachers at 
organizing. They have no such pliant mass to 
act on, no taste or disposition to act the tyrant 
and the demagogue over it if they had. Dec- 
ades of peace and affluence have banished fear 
and nursed presumption in the popular mind 
respecting national security ; and patriotism has 
almost died out for lack of exercise. The pub- 
lic press and public speakers have been so far 
suborned that it is next to impossible to make 
any extensive impression on the public mind 



DISCOURAGEMENTS OF PATRIOTISM. 177 

respecting the existing state of things or the 
future prospect. No argument that can be 
educed can counteract among the masses the 
influence of interested leaders, bent on the at- 
tainment of office by the exercise of party zeal- 
Falsehood and vituperation are used by the 
dominant party to the wildest extent, and with 
the effect to create an impression of more or 
less general extent that their opponents lie as hadly 
as they do themselves^ and are as dishonest and cor- 
rupt. This general impression that all political 
men are corrupt, and that all their utterances, 
being designed for party ends, are as likely to 
be false as true, seems to cut off the last chan- 
nel through which any effort can be directed to 
retrieve the general demoralization and despotiz- 
ing of the popular masses. The intelligent and 
patriotic seem doomed to sit down helpless, and 
see the dreadful work go on, till the madness be- 
comes so excessive as to produce a reaction and 
correct itself Twice did the evil run to this ex- 
tent, and twice did this corrective reaction take 
place, and the dominant party in 1840 and in 
1848 simply through the excess of its obviously 
corrupt maladministration was defeated in its at- 
tempts to elect its party candidate to the presi- 
dency. And twice did a very singular interposi- 
tion of divine Providence, or some assassinating 



178 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

instrument of human designing, cut suddenly 
short the lives of the men who were elected to 
the chief magistracy contrary to the wish and 
purpose of the leaders of the otherwise invaria- 
bly successful party. Thus leaving that party a 
practically unbroken series of successes from the 
inaugurating of General Jackson, in 1828, to 
1860, when its leaders, assembled in convention 
at Charleston for traitorous purposes, elected to 
defeat themselves ; and, as a consequence, in the 
following year Abraham Lincoln was called on 
to do the best he could in an effort to gather up 
and reunite the palsied and putrescent frag- 
ments of a severed Union. 

In the mean tim^e, the portion of the people 
who had been left out in the formation and con- 
tinuance of the dominant party, seeing the 
worse than uselessness of attempting to oper- 
ate a rival party organization, abandoned the ef- 
fort. The more able and discriminating of them 
retired from concern in public affairs. The 
more corruptible of them at last joined the 
dominant party, or, in combination with such as 
occasionally fell off from that party organiza- 
tion, on principles more or less allied to those 
of the old parent, formed the succession of nas- 
cent, imperfect, and shortlived party organisms 
which have successively borne the honor of be- 



NASCENT PARTY ORGANISMS. 179 

ing the opposition, since the Whigs disbanded, 
one of which caught the crumbhng government 
and happened to have the national administra- 
• tion fall into its hands when, at the close of 
Buchanan's term, the party that elected him, 
true to its principles, mature in its tendencies, 
with traitorous intent, achieved its suicide. 



XXXII. 

THE PROSTRATION RESJCJLTING TO A PATRIOTIC MINORITY, 
FROM THE USURPATION OF A DESPOTIC FEW, CONTROL- 
LING A MAJORITY. 

In case of hopeless and unendurable abuse of 
power, under a monarchical government, armed 
rebellion affords a natural, and at least tempora- 
rily successful, method of redress. As long as 
the monarchical form of government is contin- 
ued, it can hardly be said to be a revolution for 
a people inured to being dictated to, to change 
one master for another. But in a democracy, 
revolution, when once begun, tends strongly to 
become chronic. Besides this, when the major- 
ity of the voters can be irredeemably cajoled by 
a succession of graceless villains, whose vocation 
it is to manage voters for their own and their 
party's benefit, the last of human remedies ap- 
pears to have been exhausted. With such a 
cajoled or cajolable majority, a revolution — un- 
less it be a revolution back to despotism — can 
accomplish nothing, unless it be, if possible, a 
nearer approach to anarchy, or a chronic condi- 
tion of revolt and intestine war. 

180 



SHRINKING FROM POLITICAL DUTY. 181 

Under this condition of affairs, the prevalent 
practical course with us has been, for men of 
patriotism and ability to abandon politics and all 
practical concern in governmental matters, and 
to devote themselves to private business and 
personal and family aggrandizement, in other 
lines of action; consoling themselves with the 
reflection that the people rule, and have every- 
thing their own way. 

It may seem hard to say that more than this 
is required of a democratic member of a demo- 
cratic community. Yet the events of the cur- 
rent crisis compel us to admit, and to act on the 
admission, that much more is required ; even 
the temporary resigning of almost every per- 
sonal right, and the submitting of ourselves to 
military discipline, with the certainty of experi- 
encing very great hardships, privations, and suf- 
ferings, with the imminent risk of losing health, 
limb, and life itself What is the conclusion? 
This, namely, if the privilege of existence as a 
democratic member of a democratic community 
is liable to cost all this, in a crisis that imperils 
the nation's life, it is reasonable, and no more 
than reasonable, that, to avert the occurrence of 
such a crisis, something more should be done 
than merely to submit to the majority, and then, 
besides this passive duty, turn one's entire atten- 

" 16 



182 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

tion, concern, and effort to the work of personal 
and family aggrandizement. The efforts of de- 
signing demagogues should he counteracted ivith a 
liberal portion of the persistencg, the zeal, the per 
sonal hazard and ' the cost, ivith ivhich, ivhen the crisi 
arrives, we are obliged to contend for national exist 
ence on the tented field, and in the battle's strife 
The inadequacy of public legislation, the mal- 
administration of public officers, the deliberate 
frauds and falsehoods of partisan politicians, 
combinations to defeat the ends of justice and 
the achieving of the public weal, should be un- 
covered and explained by men who are known 
to have higher ends in view than to fatten at 
the public crib. 

It were better that the code duello, with all 
its evils, should prevail than that millions of 
voters in our democratic government should be 
fed by the half century together on nothing but 
the political fiction and falsehood which design- 
ing knaves, who are incapable of any higher 
aim than to plunder the public treasury for per- 
sonal and party benefit, see fit to deal out to 
them, till another war like the present, with the 
slaughter of its tens of thousands shall result. 

Perhaps no other operating cause, but the 
throes of expiring despotism, could have pro- 
duced such a colossal and infuriate combination 



PENALTY OF NEGLECTED DUTY. 183 

as is now struggling to overthrow democracy in 
this country. But had those on tvhom it devolved 

i,o sustain democracij in this coiintrij for the past 
quarter of a century, been more persistent and in- 
kiiring, and less presuming, imerile, and supine, the 
disaster ivhich the country is noiv suffering could never 
mve occurred It may be true that no motive 
muse but the throes of expiring despotism could 
liave induced the present assault on the life of 
our nation ; bnt it is also true that without 
the powerful collateral aid of a despotic and 
traitorous party of Northern citizens to assist 
them, the Southern despots who are now threat- 

i ening our capitol and invading the Free States 

' with an army of a hundred thousand men, could 
scarcely have survived the first year of their 

' onslaught. 

One of the most extensively disastrous ef- 
fects produced outside of its own limits, by the 
party on whose chronicle we are dwelling, was 
the obliterating of the public conscience and 
the thorough spread of corrupt principles and 
practices in respect to everything political; so 
that material impres-sed with political honesty 
can hardly be found, wherewith to constitute a 
ruling majority, even when the despotized fra- 
ternity which has ruled the country for the past 
thirty years shall have been displaced. 



184- NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

How far the presumptuous supineness and pue- 
rility of our Northern statesmen are legitimate 
results of the rich and hitherto almost costless 
immunities conferred by our system of free gov- 
ernment, and to what extent they are justly at- 
tributable to the governmentless mythologies 
which obtain among us so extensively in the 
religious world, are questions that may be sug- 
gested here, but which it lies not within the 
assigned limits of these pages to discuss. 

When it comes to be the unmistakable testi- 
mony of current history, that there is not force 
enough in our national administration to punish 
the most llagrant malfeasance in office, or the 
most gigantic frauds, it is the opinion of the 
present wiitcr that a little judicious blood-let- 
ting, af:er the manner of Wilham Tell, would be 
for the public health. And tbat when this or 
other remedial action is deferred to the all-ab- 
sorbing vocation of personal and family aggran- 
dizement, there exists a festering plethora which 
betokens disastrous sickness of the civil system. 
It is a sign of unhealthiness in the system, when 
tlie powerlessness of public justice can be calcu- 
lated on only by the baldest villains. " It is " 
sometimes " expedient that one man should die 
for the people, that the whole nation perish 
not." 



XXXIII. 

HOW THE JACKSON-BUCHANAN PARTY BECAME IDENTIFIED 
WITH SECESSION. 

Andrew Jackson was not a Secessionist ; Martin 
Van Buren was not a Secessionist. How, then, 
came it to pass that the party, of which these 
men were the founders and fashioners, should 
become a powerful and efficient instrument in 
the hands of Jefferson Davis and his coadjutors 
for destroying the United States government? 

Jackson, Van Buren, their compeers and suc- 
cessors of the same political school, down to 
James Buchanan, did one thing ; namely, they 
combined, kept up, and operated, a political party 
on the following principles : among the mem- 
bership, unqualified devotion to the iiartij and 
unquestioning obedience to its leaders, with un- 
scrupulous and vindictive hostility to every one 
who opposed them ; among the leaders, the 
usurpation of the government, for the sake of 
its honors and emoluments, to be appropriated, 
first, to perpetuate the usurpation, and, second, 
to aggrandize themselves individually. 

Patriotism and justice, veracity and self-respect, 

16* 185 



186 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

in short, every sentiment more elevated or sa- 
cred than the honor proverbial among thieves, 
was effectually replaced by a blind, unscrnpulous 
devotion to performing the dictates of party 
leaders. Instead of fearing for the destruction' 
of their country, and instead of being purposed, 
at all costs, to avert any detriment or disaster 
that might threaten the precious civil institu- 
tions which their fathers bequeathed, and to 
which they owed their unparalleled prosperity, 
the damnable political demagogues who assem- 
bled at the national capitol, under guise of exec- 
utive administration and legislature, had brought 
the popular masses of their party to a state of 
mind in which they feared nothing but the defeat 
of their party candidate, no matter who he 
might be, and were perfectly purposed at every 
cost to defend nothing but the succession of mis- 
creants, who should be designated in secret party 
conclave to succeed each other, in wielding the 
usurped governmental powers for party purposes, 
and in disposing of the public treasure for per- 
sonal aggrandizement, — a state of mind in which 
they could see nothing offensive but the real or 
imaginary faults of political men who belonged 
not to their party, nothing to be feared but the 
exposure, breaking up, and reform of that deep 
and dark and lung-continued series of atrocities, 



FRUITS OF SO-CALLED DEMOCRACY. 187 

into supporting and defending which themselves 
had been betrayed. To avert these feared re- 
sults, no sacrifice was too costly, no application 
too assiduous. 

James Buchanan and Isaac Toucey, two despi- 
cable lickspittles of the perjured crew who ruled 
over them, and used them and their official 
power to initiate the present dreadfully disastrous 
War, are but mature and ripe specimens of what 
the principles and practices of their long domi- 
nant party have tended, more or less effectually, 
to make of every Northern man, who, for the last 
thirty years, has consented to be counted in its 
numbers. 

The results, to the Union, of the official con- 
duct of James Buchanan and Isaac Toucey, — 
the deliberate giving up of the army and navy, 
the forts and arsenals of the country, into the 
hands of conspirators leagued to destroy the 
government, — are nothing more nor less than 
the results which the principles and practices of 
their party have directly, and more or less effec- 
tually, tended to produce, ever since that party 
first received its characteristic impress from the 
consecutive administrations of Andrew Jackson 
and Martin Van Buren. The truth of this re- 
mark is amply attested by the pertinacity with 
which — notwithstanding the defection of such 



188 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

men as Butler, and Corcoran, Bus teed, D. Dick- 
inson, Shej^ley of Maine, McClernand of Indiana, 
and hundreds more of the ablest and most hon- 
est that ever were caught in the meshes of a 
colossal, corrupt, and traitorous party organiza- 
tion — the major part of the masses of that 
party, up to the fall elections of 1863, under 
the lead of C. L. Yallandigham, Fernando Wood, 
and Horatio Seymour, still adhere to the cause 
of their old Southern leaders* 

The Southern oligarchy under Jefferson Davis 
conspired to overthrow the government, that 
they might obtain a large fragment from its 
ruins whereon to erect an empire sacred to des- 
potism in general and to African slavery in par- 
ticular, from whence to fulminate destruction on 
all antagonists, to the boundaries of the conti- 
nent, and to the end of time. 

It will be seen that there is no very positive 
contrariety between the aims of the two frater- 
nities. Up to the time at which the Southern 
conspiracy matured into armed treason, nothing 
was necessary but for the conspiring party to 
conceal their ulterior design, and the two frater- 
nities were one in spirit and in action, straining 
every nerve to beat down their common oppo- 
nents. Up to this point, the only difference be- 

* See Appendix F. 



CONFLUENCE OF COGNATE PARTIES. 189 

tween the two affiliated parties was, that the 
Southern wing would and the Northern wing 
would not prosecute their common vocation to 
the point of armed rebellion. 

But the same qualities which had given South- 
ern men a ruling ascendency in the government 
of the nation had, nearly or quite from its ori- 
gin, given them a ruling ascendency in the Jack- 
son-Buchanan party. This ascendency they had 
used to impart to their subalterns and partisans, 
particularly at the North, a party spirit of the 
utmost virulence, and habits of party action to 
the last degree violative of the dictates of honor, 
honesty, justice, and patriotism. So that, up to 
the time at which these Southern leaders of the 
party threw off all disguise and assumed the 
attitude of armed rebellion, their Northern coad- 
jutors. President Buchanan among the foremost 
of them, were ready and earnest to engage in 
anything, no matter how dishonorable, unjust, 
mendacious, or treasonable, so long as it did not 
expose their own necks to the halter, and they 
could be shown some plausible reason to believe 
that the proposed measure would result to the 
benefit of their political party. Hence the dis- 
persion of the United States army and navy, 
the rifling of the arsenals and treasury, and 
the almost utterly defenceless exposure of the 



190 NATURAL HISTORt OF SECESSION. 

Southern forts, mint, and shipyards, preparatory 
to opening the present hostihties, which prepa- 
ration James Buchanan assisted in accomplish- 
ing, and his Northern adherents assented to, 
for the benefit of their political party, and in 
obedience to their political leaders. 

At the time of the attempted execution of 
the nullification project, this school of treason, 
of which the present seceding body is the out- 
growth, was confined to South Carolina. The 
issue on which this project w^orked was the tariff. 
The effort was to unite the South in resistance 
to the government on the ground, as was pre- 
tended, that the general government, under the 
influence of Northern men, would tax Southern 
imports for the sake of protecting Northern 
manufactories. 

Upon the suppression of this conspiracy, by 
the prompt energy of President Jackson, it is 
matter of history that the defeated leaders of 
that scheme took counsel, and determined to 
change the issue from the tariff to the slavery 
question, assured that the whole South could be 
united on this latter issue, and on nothing else. 
The doctrine of State sovereignty, or the superi- 
ority of State authority over the authority of the 
general government, was from this time propa- 
gated with the utmost industry, especially at the 



THE ISSUE RENDERED SECTIONAL. 191 

South, for the poisoning of the popular mind, 
and to prepare a foundation upon which, at the 
proper time, the Secession edifice could be reared. 
From this time, also, no doubt, it was that the 
clique of traitors who remodelled their plans after 
the failure of their South Carolina nullification, 
saw the important benefit which would result to 
them by having a general political party under 
their control, selected the Jackson-Buchanan 
party as best suited to answer their ends, gath- 
ered themselves into it as honest bona fide mem- 
bers, took it under their control, and began to 
manage it for the accomplishment of their own 
purposes. 

When, after the death of President Taylor, 
and the defeat of the Whigs in attempting to 
elect his immediate successor, the Whig party 
gave up its organization and became practically 
extinct, these Southern leaders of the Jackson- 
Buchanan party, by preventing either the re-for- 
mation of the Whig or the successful organization 
of any other opposition party in the Southern 
States, achieved this important result ; namely, 
that the opposition which was raised against them, 
if it ever assumed a party form and organization, 
must of necessity be a sectional party, confined 
to the Northern States. This result they found 
themselves able to accomplish by virtue of the 



192 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

despotic control they already possessed over the 
non-slave-holding population of the Southern 
States. 

So remote were the Northern people from any- 
thing liiie ostensible monarchy, that the dictation 
of this clique of despots came to them like the 
'^ Vox populi, vox Dei," by which the Democrat is 
always governed. And when they cried against 
Abraham Lincoln and his supporters, "Black 
Republican," " Abolitionist," the latter seemed to 
shrink back and shudder, as if they had been 
rebuked by a voice from heaven. Whereas, the 
seven and three-fourths milHons of non-slave- 
holding whites in the South had scarcely more 
to do with originating or reiterating this outcry, 
or with inducing the sectionalized state of the 
anti-despotic party, than had the black slaves 
that served under the same masters. 



XXXIT. 

RECAPITULATION OF THE PART PERFORMED BY THE JACK- 
SOX-BUCHANAN PARTY IN BRINGING ABOUT THE PRESENT 
WAR. 

On this branch of our general subject we re- 
sume as follows: — The disposition and power 
for despotic usurpation was produced and nour- 
ished into strength in this Repubhc, by having 
an abject mass of Africans consigned to perpet- 
ual bondage by the laws and Constitution of the 
country as commonly interpreted. 

This disposition and power for despotic usur- 
pation first manifested itself in the form of 
overt treason, in South Carolina, during the ad- 
ministration of President Jackson, in an attempt 
to nullify the laws of Congress by authority of 
the individual State. This attempted treason 
against his government was promptly suppressed 
by Jackson ; who also founded a political party, 
which, without literally infracting the Constitu- 
tion, usurped, and, with the exception of two 
brief and partial interruptions, for thirty years, 
held the United States government for its own 
use and behoof; and this it succeeded in accom- 

17 193 



1 

194 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

plishing by virtue of distributing the govern- 
ment revenues as plunder to be divided out in 
reward for party services. 

This usurping party, though distributed 
through the Northern as well as through the 
Southern States, like the general government, 
was under the practical and permanent control 
of leading Southerners. At least they soon 
placed themselves in such control. 

As the natural tendencies to despotic usur- 
pation developed in these leading Southerners, 
and as the necessities of their situation pressed 
them more and more, they formed the intelli- 
gent design to break up the government, and 
on a portion of its ruins found an empire for 
themselves, free from the embarrassing presence 
of a democratic people and democratic institu- 
tions. Next to this in point of time came the 
purpose of using the party which Jackson 
founded, to demoralize and divide the North ; 
at the same time extinguishing all organized op- 
position in the Southern States. They did 
much to conceal their real aim, by successfully 
monopolizing to themselves and to their adher- 
ents the political appellatives "Democrats" and 
" Democracy." They despotized and depraved 
their own party in the North, by accustoming 
them to march under training file-leaders, as 



THE ADVENT OF TREASON. 195 

near upon tlie verge of treason as they could 
go and not precipitate war. They demorahzed 
that portion of the Northern people whom they 
could not control, by rendering political integ- 
rity useless, and perfidious corruption practi- 
cally unobjectionable. 

When they had matured their arrangements 
and completed preliminary operations in these 
several directions, having also disposed of the 
treasury, army, navy, arms, and military stores 
of government to their satisfaction, they then 
deliberately broke up their own political party, 
thereby throwing the responsibilities of the dis- 
mantled government into the green hands of an 
ill-connected sectional minority, opened their 
overwhelming batteries on Fort Sumter, and 
advanced their legions by rail to beleaguer 
Washington. 

The elements of success had hardly been mis- 
calculated on the part of the traitors. Their 
sway over the Southern masses was absolute 
and unconditional, while the whole North did 
not contain a man in whom any considerable 
portion of the people felt that they could con- 
fide the conduct of public affairs in the crisis 
that w^as forced on them; there was scarcely 
known to be a military officer who could credi- 
tably handle an army of ten thousand men; 



196 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

there was a natural certainty that the best of 
such officers as should be called out by the 
emergency would be sacrificed to the jealousy 
of rival aspirants ; the habits and character of 
the Northern people were as remote as possi- 
ble from warlike j)ursuits ; the interruption of 
their gainful industry would double to them the 
calamities of every campaign, irrespective of 
victory or defeat ; it would be a slow and diffi- 
cult process to inspire such a people with any- 
thing like martial spirit or enthusiasm ; the 
conspirators had a political party more or less 
reliably attached to them interspersed through- 
out the North, with powerful influence to men- 
ace the administration and counteract its efforts, 
and ready to act as spies on every square mile 
of Northern territory, in every regiment of sol- 
diers, in many important positions of civil and 
military trust, in either house of Congress, in 
every executive department, and not improba- 
bly, in the very bed-chamber of the Chief Mag- 
istrate ; * the noted honesty and mildness of 
Mr. Lincoln would give the conspirators exten- 
sive immunity in traitorous crime and violence, 
and the powerful prestige that pertains to a 
bold, decided, severe, unrelenting course of ac- 

* No suspicion is here intended to be thrown on any member of Presi- 
dent Lincohi's family. 



SLIGHT MISCALCULATION. 197 

tion ; and last, but not least, the inexperience 
of those into whose hands the government must 
be intrusted would be a source of certain and 
extensive feebleness. The only points in which 
the conspirators appear to have miscalculated, 
were two : the unreliabiHty of their own cor- 
rupted partisans in the North, and the exhaust- 
lessness of the recuperative energies of a truly 
democratic people. 

In respect to the former of these two points, 
the work of converting back the masses of a 
great political party from democracy to despot- 
ism must have been very imperfectly perform- 
ed, being undertaken and carried on in the 
midst of the most democratic community on 
earth. There were multitudes of men in the 
ranks of that party who would tread the verge 
of treason to secure a party victory, while un- 
der the influence of heated party feeling, and 
excited by the presence of active leaders inces- 
santly laboring to deceive them, who would still 
refuse to make the damning plunge across that 
boundary, merely to save the necks of their ab- 
sent masters. The very injury that had been 
done to their better principles might naturally 
enough be expected at length to react against 
the villains by whom they iiad been instructed. 

Kespecting the recovering power of a true 

17* 



198 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 

democracy, the world has had but little experi- 
ence, and the truth in this regard would of ne- 
cessity be slow to reach the attention or secure 
the belief of a crew of half barbarous despots 
battling for the extinction of all democracy, 
until such time as they shall be privileged to 
read that important truth evinced in the fact of 
their own helpless overthrow. 



XXXY. 



THE ABOLITIONISTS. 



No history of the causes that contributed to 
brino; about the existino; calamitous intestine 
war will be complete, which does not give a 
somewhat prominent consideration to the char- 
acter and influence of the Abolitionists, techni- 
cally so called. By this term I would be under- 
stood to describe a sect of political religionists 
who have made themselves conspicuous in the 
Northern States for the last thirty years, as the 
special advocates and champions of freedom and 
morahty in their bearings on slavery in the 
Southern States. 

The leaders of this sect/and of necessity its 
members to a great extent, are distinguished for 
a virulent rejection of the great truths of re- 
vealed religion, while yet they are the exceed- 
ingly zealous advocates of an indefinite and 
variable code of deistical morals, framed in part 
according to suggestions drawn from the same 
sacred Scriptures whose supreme authority they 
vehemently despise. The object of their deisti- 
cal worship is usually represented by themselves 



200 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

as shorn of every lineament of vindictive justice, 
and endowed with imperturbable, illimitable, in- 
discriminate benevolence toward the members 
of the human family, irrespective of moral char- 
acter, acts or aims. 

Of course, in a religion like this, the holding 
of one's fellow-man in involuntary servitude 
would be the sin of sins. It would partake al- 
most of the heinousness of beef-eating under the 
mythology of ancient Egypt. And the obvious 
infirmity of the deity of this modern sect would 
remain to be made up to a great extent by the 
zeal and activity of his worshippers. 

We have elsewhere observed that the highly 
religious character of the early settlers of New 
England appears still in form to characterize 
their descendants, even when the latter have 
abandoned entirely the foundations on which 
their fathers reared the structure of their relig- 
ious faith and practice. Among these, the Abo- 
litionists hold a prominent place. 

We have also elsewhere remarked, that after 
the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and 
the freeing of the slaves in the Northern States, 
while, under the influence of the rising cotton 
trade, political sentiment in the South was verg- 
ing back upon despotism, the principles and 
practices of free government, ^^for better for 



LIBERTY TO EXCESS. 201 

worse/' were having unobstructed course, and 
were working out their natural tendencies with- 
out impediment among the people of the North- 
ern States. 

Probably it never occurred to the people of 
these States that there was any such thing as 
excess in loving political liberty. And the world 
may well wonder that there has been so little ; 
that Agrarian ism, and Fourierism, and Commun- 
ism, and their kindred degenerations of legiti- 
mate popular liberty, have had 'so few followers, 
and have produced among us so small results ; 
that constitutional civil authority has been so 
generally respected, so entirely preserved, that 
it remained for the representatives and abettors 
of despotism to do the first acts that tended in 
any material extent to mar or undermine the 
goodly governmental structure which our repub- 
lican ancestors bequeathed to us. But the class 
we are contemplating, deeming themselves happy 
in finding so prominent an object as Southern 
slavery, against which to vent their zeal, and a 
sentiment so universal, so deep-rooted, so blame- 
less and unquestionable, as our inherited love of 
popular liberty, to which they could appeal for 
support and cooperation, soon made themselves 
the prominent leaders and champions of all 



202 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

who could be excited to pursue that liberty to 
excess. 

The professedly Christian denominations who 
really denied the truth of the revealed Script- 
ures had by this time become numerous and in- 
fluential. These had no objection to the Aboli- 
tionists on account of their infidelity; while 
very many members of evangelical churches felt 
their love of freedom so outraged by the fact of 
existing slavery and its attendant evils, that they 
forgot for a time their obligations of supreme 
allegiance to the authority of divine Revelation, 
and, with more or less sincerity, affiliated with 
those who derided a divinity who was not up to 
the times on the subject of human rights, and 
cursed alike the producers and the product of a 
civil Constitution which bound them to respect 
the rights of those who held their fellow-men in 
bondage. 

Could the real character of the Abolitionists, 
and thareal weight of their influence, have been 
known and admitted North and South, their due 
space in history would have been less than it 
now is. But circumstances peculiar to either 
section, and illy understood in the other, con- 
spired to render their influence on the affairs of 
the country peculiarly infelicitous, and to some 
extent conducive to the present War. 



liberty's championship usurped. 203 

Men brought up in the license of heathenism 
are kept quiet by its depressing ignorance, if not 
by the fetters of its superstition. But when one 
who has enjoyed the light and health-giving in- 
fluence of revealed religion, and has been educa- 
ted under more or less of its restraints, casts 
loose from its authority; as he begins to deal 
familiarly with things that other people rever- 
ence, and to spurn the boundaries which others 
never pass, in the estimation of undiscrimina- 
ting multitudes, the noisy extravagance of his 
diction, and the unembarrassed celerity, the 
drunken freedom, of his mental gait are almost 
sure to be mistaken for superior intelligence, 
eloquence, and strength. 

Thus it came about that the Abolitionists, 
who were really indefatigable in their labors, 
acquired a prominence before the public mind, 
and engrossed a share of attention, entirely 
disproportioned to either their political or moral 
strength. 

So early and so effectually did they succeed 
in taking under their patronage the universal 
love of popular liberty in all its bearings on the 
enslaved, that it became practically impossible 
for any one, however true in his support of his 
country's Constitution, or however firm in his 
belief of the truths of revealed religion, to say 



204 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

or do anything tending to limit or withstand 
pro-slavery aggression without becoming more 
or less identified with these infidel leaders in 
the estimation of the observant but uncom- 
mitted public, particularly at the South. 



.HF? 



XXXVI. 

MISCHIEVOUS DIVERSITY OF VIEWS AS HELD NORTH AND 
SOUTH RESPECTING THE ABOLITIONISTS. 

Among the first requisites of permanent pop- 
ular liberty are popular self-restraint, implicit 
submission to constituted authorities, a sacred 
regard for the rights of the minority. In the 
Northern States, where popular liberty obtains 
in its greatest perfection, this, as well as every 
other requisite of that liberty is, and has long 
been, largely possessed. It was this popular 
self-restraint, this sacred regard for the rights of 
the minority, that secured immunity to the Abo- 
litionists, while they ranted and blazed against 
the God of revelation, and the Constitution, and 
founders of the government. 

At the South, where popular liberty never did 
prevail to any great extent, this popular self- 
restraint not only did not exist, but the very 
conception of such a thing was wanting. If 
any minority there offended against the senti- 
ments and wishes of the majority, or of their 
political leaders, it was "mob them." "lynch 
them," "call a meeting, appoint a vigilance 

18 206 



206 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

committee," ^^ tar and feather them," " duck 
them," " cowhide them," " shoot them," " hang 
them," — such was the verdict, and such the 
execution, and not unfrequently the execution 
came first. The Southern people knew of no 
motive but cowardice or pusillanimity that could 
prompt to a different course. When they be- 
came aware of the conduct of the Abolitionists 
at the North, and also that they were not seri- 
ously interfered with, they of course concluded 
that the majority of the Northern people were 
of the same way of thinking, or too cowardly 
and pusillanimous to resist. If some of the 
more intelliiirent Southerners ascertained that 
these views which they took of the people of 
the North were not correct, they lacked both 
the ability and disposition to disabuse the public 
mind. 

The Abolitionists were regarded at the North 
as a set of harmless fanatics, who made a great 
deal of noise, but exerted very little influence, 
and produced no direct practical results, and 
would ultimately sink of their own weight if let 
alone. The divine declaration, " They thatiionor 
me I will honor, and they that despise me shall 
be lightly esteemed," has seldom been more ob- 
viously or more conspicuously fulfilled, than in 
the history of this class of persons. 



THE AFRICAN COLONIZATIONISTS. 207 

As much of the real anti-slavery sentiment of 
the Eevolutionary period as survived in the South 
was early embodied in the Colonization Society, 
an association which aimed at and accomplished 
a great work for the negroes by withstanding 
the African slave-trade, by supplying a channel 
in which whatever of anti-slavery feeling existed 
in the South could exert itself, by demonstrating 
the capability of the negro race for improve- 
ment, civilization, and self-government, and by 
affording the masters who were disposed to 
emancipate their slaves an opportunity to do so 
with the prospect of the negroes being benefit- 
ed by their freedom. This society was among 
the first recipients of the virulent antipathy of 
the Abolitionists. Henry Clay, the ablest states- 
man of his age, a living martyr to his lack of 
sympathy with pro-slavery politicians, and a 
prominent champion of Colonization, was reject- 
ed and defeated in the presidential canvass of 
1844 by the Abolitionists of New York, who, by 
their factious course, procured the election of 
James K. Polk, the annexation of Texas, the 
war with Mexico, and the addition of three other 
of the spacious States from the northern portion 
of that republic, to extend the area of slave ter- 
ritory. By their feeble impractical ultraism, the 
Abolitionists generated a powerful reactive influ- 



208 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

ence in favor of the pro-slaverj loco-focos, the 
only effective allies of Secession at the North. 
Farther than this the history of their political 
influence at the North appears to be a blank. 

At the South, however, they were regarded 
with more sincere concern and dread. They 
were, to the Southern mind, the representatives 
of all that Northern love of popular liberty 
which was dangerous to slavery, and was fast 
coming to be distasteful to the common senti- 
ment as it verged back on despotism. They 
were, more or less openly, the avowed enemies 
of revealed religion and of the civil Constitution. 
The mist that hung about the limits of their 
numbers and their strength served to magnify 
both indefinitely. It is true that they generally 
assaulted slavery at a very respectful distance, 
but no one could tell what they might not 
accomplish through the mails and by secret 
emissaries, toward exploding the magazine on 
which the quiet of the Slave States is admitted 
to repose. They had no respect for the right of 
property in slaves ; and, from ignorance or mal- 
ice, — to the imperilled Southerner it mattered 
little which, — they had no fear of a servile insur- 
rection being induced, nor any dread of the un- 
told calamities Avhich such an event would bring. 

The South was full of persons who were not 



SOUTHERN VIEWS OF LIBERTY. 209 

consciously to blame for the existence of slavery 
among them. It was more than full of those 
who denied the right of Northern fanatics, of 
any class, more especially of infidels and anarch- 
ists, to visit upon their heads the sins of their 
fathers, or even their own sins, by bringing on 
them wantonly the fact or the fear of servile 
insurrection. They regarded the Federal Consti- 
tution as guaranteeing to them the right of " life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," — even 
the liberty of holding negroes as slaves, and 
the pursuit of happiness in working them at 
discretion, without interference from without 
the limits of their own slave section ; and with 
any one who construed that great document 
differently they could naturally have but short 
parleying. The peculiar democratic virtue of 
that self-restraint — that respect for the rights 
of the minority which led the Northern people 
to harbor and protect incendiaries while as- 
saulting the peace of the South — was a virtue 
of which they had no comprehension. Neither 
were Southern minds ever able to compre- 
hend the pecuhar innocence, or excellence, of 
that mode of logic by which slavery was 
denounced as a "sin" against the deistical 
morals of a class of men who revile the sacred 
Scriptures and their divine Author. 

18* 



210 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION* 

The Abolitionists were, and necessarily must 
have been, a source of extreme, incessant irrita- 
tion to the people of the South, and enabled the 
despotic pro-slavery leaders to accomplish what 
they desired, in dividing the two sections from 
each other, and in arrsiying the people of each 
in hostility against the other. Without this irrita- 
tion, the extreme bitterness which has been man- 
ifested at the South, throughout the present con- 
test, against the Northern people, never could 
have been generated. Without the universal 
obloquy which has been brought upon the cause 
of negro freedom, by its most prominent advo- 
cates, President Lincoln would never have been 
able to keep his constituency quiet for a year and 
eight months after the opening of the war be- 
fore issuing his Proclamation of Emancipation. 

It may not be inappropriate here to suggest 
the inquiry, whether the peculiar tenets of 
that no-government class, — of whom the Abo- 
litionists form a conspicuous specimen, who 
begin by abolishing future punishment, then 
capital punishment, and proceed along down to 
the practical abolition of all punishment, — have 
not been the source of much of the extreme, 
misplaced, and sickening leniency with which 
the present national administration has been 
wont to absolve culprits of every class and dye 



WHY CRIMINALS ARE NOT PUNISHED. 211 

upon the guaranty of their mere idle promise 
to do better ? — whether former administrations 
have not been to some extent affected by the 
same putrescent moral paralysis? — and whether 
the same is not a threatening source of national 
decadence ? 

To those who believe in a moral government 
of the universe, it may not be without interest 
or profit to inquire, whether the present pro- 
tracted and afflictive war has not been divinely 
sent on the Northern States to check and turn 
back the growth of this no-punishment, no-gov- 
ernment deism, the offspring of protracted afflu- 
ence and peace, which has already done much 
to undermine the foundations of our nation's 
moral strength. 



XXXVII. 

THE DESPOTIC CLASS IN EUROPE IDENTIFIED WITH THE DES- 
POTS OF AMERICA IN THE EXISTING ONSLAUGHT TO DE- 
STROY DEMOCRACY. 

The third and last great collateral topic that 
enters into the plan of the present work, is the 
part taken by monarchists abroad in bringing 
about the Secession of the Southern States, and 
sustaining the present intestine War. 

As the time approached for the full forma- 
tion of a popular government on this continent, 
the monarchies of Europe grew sickly and dis- 
turbed. It was as if a demand for increased 
popular rights and liberties had been infused 
into the popular masses by an unseen hand. In 
England, this popular longing after liberty burst 
forth in the days of Cromwell, and, after annull- 
ing for a time the prerogatives of the monarch, 
allowed their restoratio^i, but circumscribed the 
sphere of their action with a resistless hand. 
From that time down to the recent revolution 
in Italy, every nation has been more or less agi- 
tated by the same upheaval of the masses, the 
same irrepressible demand for enlarged popular 

212 



PARTIES IN EUROPE. 213 

rights and liberties. The result has been, that 
parties have been produced, monarchist and Hb- 
eral, not with very definite boundaries, or with 
exact intelhgent aims, but with strong, insatiate 
longings for the preservation or modification of 
the old monarchical system. The nobihty, the 
privileged classes, the very wealthy, and the 
very poor, usually adhere to royalty ; while the 
middle classes incline to popular liberty. The 
conflict between these two parties comes to di- 
rect intelligent collision only on sparse occa- 
sions. For the most part, it goes on in a 
dreamy, obscure manner, like the alternate 
dominance of disease and health, life and death, 
in the frame of a sufferer from severe disease. 
The antagonism is there ; it is necessary, in- 
evitable. The popular party has the irresolute, 
undetermined, unconscious strength ; its antago- 
nist has preseflt possession of powder, intelligent 
fear, and iron organization. It has learned 
much by experience in its protracted and 
deepening conflict. It has greatly modified 
its demands, its aims, and its modes of action. 
So much so that it seems almost to have com- 
bined within itself more or less of the con- 
stituent elements of its antagonistic principle, 
popular government. The reigns of Cromwell 
and of the Napoleon dynasty appear to be 



214 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

of a mongrel class, — a peaceful commingling 
of despotism and democracy. But all such 
specimens are transient, and soon subside to 
the one party or the other. 

During the war of the American Revolution, 
while the real nature of democratic govern- 
ment, and its universal antagonism to monarchy, 
were not understood, moved by her chronic an- 
tipathy to England, France so far forgot herself 
as to take sides with the revolted colonies, and 
assist them to achieve their independence. This 
proved to be the first step toward the establish- 
ment of a system of democratic government, 
which has reacted disastrously on the cause of 
monarchy in the old world. By this act, 
France won the everlasting gratitude of the hu- 
man family ; but she planted in her own bosom 
the seeds of that popular commotion that in- 
gulfed her ancient dynasty. No monarchy 
ever before had the opportunity, none since has 
had the fatuity, to commit such a blunder as to 
give willing aid to the natural enemy of all 
monarchies. 

During the period in which only natural 
causes acted in converting the Southern people 
back from democracy to despotism, Europe was 
innocent of the change. When natural causes 
began to give place to intelligent design, it was 
otherwise. 



COLLUSION AGAINST LIBERTY. 215 

No sooner did the idea enter a traitor's brain 
that something could be made by a severance 
of the American Union, than the desire, the ex- 
pectation, the assurance of foreign aid came in 
to stimulate and confirm the traitorous intent. 
Not that the traitorous crew of Calhoun or of 
Davis understood, as we now understand, their 
own lapse back from democracy to despotism, 
or the necessary unanimity of all despotic hearts 
and hands, w^hen their common interests are at 
stake, or the cause of popular freedom is to be 
assailed; but there w^as a felt bond of sympa- 
thetic union between the despot class in this 
country and their kind abroad. 

These expectations of foreign aid were even 
greater than events have justified. Like the 
kindred expectations which were placed on their 
corrupted and enslaved political party in the 
North, these also were too sanguine. Not that 
the monarchical class in Europe were insincere 
or unfaithful, but their own situation was too 
delicate and critical ; they lacked the power to 
do all that their hearts desired. The antagon- 
ism of their freedom-loving class in their own 
communities was too intense and threatening.* 

* H. G, Moffat, a working man, thus speaks to the aristocratic sympathiz- 
ers with the South in England, through the columns of the Didlij News : ' 
• " It may be very fashionable with the upper ten thousand to sympathize 
with the slave-breeding aristocrats of the South, but we of humbler birth 



21G NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

The American despots judged the people of 
Europe too much by the abject milHons of then' 
own poor white population. The contempt they 
had so often expressed for the headless populace 
in the Northern States they began to think de- 
served, and they transferred the same opinion 
to the common mass, the liberty-loving class, in 
Europe. These slaveholding despots had never 
experienced the power of an intelligent, freedom- 
loving people, undisciplined and unguided by a 
monarchical head; and they w^ere left, in their 
intoxicated pride of power, to presume that 
without monarchical guidance and headship 
there could be no formidable strength. They 
trusted to their own ability, by cutting off the 
supply of cotton, to produce wide-spread dis- 
tress, and they trusted to the mendacity of 
themselves, and of their European friends, to in- 
terpret this distress to the public ear, as caused 

have deeper ties that bind ixs to America, both political and social. When 
we see the great number leaving our shores for that gi-eat country, and as 
four out of six are relations of us common fellows, what will be our feel- 
ings ? What of mine, having sisters and all that is very dear to me, if we 
see our men-of-war bombarding New York City, knowing morally we have 
been the cause ? If we are not allowed to vote and make the government 
here, we will not quietly allow the people's government to be destroyed 
there. Working men are seldom heard in print upon this question; but let 
not our gentry suppose there is no sympathy for the North here. They will 
make an awful mistake if they go to war with America. It may be popu- 
lar with the rich, the snobs and city swells, but not with working men. 
Let them remember the Lancashire men starving first sooner than lift up a 
finger against true liberty." — j&osto/i Journal, September 24iA, 1863. 



A WAY PREPARED. 217 

by the belligerent movements of the United 
States government, in case that government 
presumed to move resistfully against the attempt 
for its dismemberment. 

They knew that there was, in foreign lands, a 
strong antipathy toward this government ; they 
had themselves, w^hile carrying on the govern- 
ment, experienced and taken pains to aggravate 
this/=' And the traitorous desire and purpose of 
severing the States of the Union had no sooner 
assumed an intelligent form, than fit and trusty 
individuals of the monarchical class abroad be- 
gan to be communicated with, consulted, and 
confided in. 

Not only were slave-holders at home and mon- 
archists abroad united by a felt sympathy and 
oneness of interest in their desire to assault and 
ruin democracy wherever it presented itself, 
but there was a kindred treason against the pop- 
ular masses of their own communities, which in- 

* Let it be i-emembered that, under the controlling influence of the same 
traitorous heads that now control the Rebel Confederacy, the United States 
government took a position of unfriendliness almost amounting to hostility 
to England, when the latter power was engaged, with France, in the war 
against Russia in the Crimea ; and also that, under the same controlling in- 
fluence, the proposal to abolish privateering, generally adopted in Europe, 
was rejected by the United States government. And there appears at least 
strong probability, if not proof, that in those and many like instances, un- 
friendliness to England on the part of our government was instigated by 
those designing men on purpose to prepare England to pursue just such an 
unfriendly course as she has pursued towards this government, in an 
emergency like the present, which emergency was, by them, not unforeseen. 



218 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

fluenced them severally alike. The slave-holding 
traitor had engaged to beguile and delude his 
seven and three-fourths millions of non-slave- 
holding white population into doing his fighting 
for him, at their own expense and at the immi- 
nent peril of their lives, and with the experi- 
ence of all the disaster which unsuccessful war- 
fare can inflict, and all, with no other prospect 
or reward, in case of success, but to complete 
and seal their own irreversible subjugation to 
their successful masters ; while the European 
monarchist engaged to defraud and cajole the 
popular European masses into supporting him 
in his costly war alliance with the slave-holders, 
for the extinguishment of the spirit and insti- 
tutions of popular freedom on this continent. 



XXXVIII. 

THE EXTENT AXD EFFICIENCY OF EUROPEAN COOPERATION 
WITH AMERICAN TREASON. 

The natural sympathies, the interests, and 
leanings of the American slave-holders and the 
European monarchists being thus identical, it 
remains for history proper to present Avhat 
evidence may reach the light concerning the 
time and manner, the terms and the extent, of 
obligations into which the latter entered to 
sustain the former in their efforts to break up 
this government. 

It is already matter of history, that, almost 
upon receiving the first intelUgence that armed 
traitors had assaulted the United States govern- 
ment, with a promptness and unanimity that 
demonstrate previous concert and collusion, the 
leading powers of Europe vouchsafed beUigerent 
rights to the insurgents, thereby preparing the 
way for full recognition of their assumed nation- 
ality, menacing this government with that full 
recognition, and advancing as far toward it as 
they could and not incur a risk that amounts 
almost to a certainty of involving themselves 

219 



220 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

in overt war, for breaking down the United 
States government, and for giving existence, 
strength, and character to the perfidious germ 
of a slave-holders' despotism. 

While these governments were thus ingen- 
iously approxhnatmg national alliance with the 
Southern traitors, in England particularly, the 
periodical press, as far as it could be controlled 
by the governing class, was set at work Avith all 
the infernal art and energy that money and 
mendacious malice could infuse, to inculpate 
and decry the government and people of this 
country, and to extol and sanctify the perjured 
crew who had undertaken to trample out this 
beacon light of liberty, and to erect their off- 
shoot of Africa's barbaric despotism in its place. 
This course was adapted and designed to 
discourage and weaken the loyal sentiment in 
the Northern States, to intimidate and depress 
the government, to embolden the northern allies 
of the Rebels ; as far as possible to turn the 
opinion of the civilized world against us, and 
prepare the people of England and France to 
sustain their governments in farther steps in 
the direction they had started, if need should 
be, even to open Avar. 

In England, the people had to be immediately 
appealed to and controlled, and the queen was 



EUROPE AIDING TREASON. 221 

as one of them. Their inclination to the side 
of freedom was strong, and their power to 
thwart the monarchical party was indisputable. 
In France, there was nothing to be feared 
from the people, provided a general outbreak 
and domestic revolution were effectually guarded 
against ; and, by imperial dictation, the empire 
was impoverished to send out and maintain an 
army of observation on the borders of this 
republic, ready to take advantage of the first 
opportunity for interfering, under the pretence 
of collecting a few millions of dollars, in bogus 
accounts, said to be due French subjects in 
Mexico. 

It is matter of history, that the monarchical 
party in England succeeded so well as to be able 
to appropriate and spend between one and two 
millions sterling in equipping a fleet, and in 
sending troops to Canada, for war with the 
United States; and to have precipitated that 
war, had not our government, with more caution 
than boldness, averted the impending collision 
by releasing the captured emissaries of the 
rebels. England's dependence on the Northern 
States for grain to keep starvation from her 
borders served also to defeat the hankering of 
the monarchical party after war with the Unit- 
ed States. 



222 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

It is matter of history, that, while the British 
government confined itself to the line of a 
menacing and semi-hostile neutrality, members 
of the ruling class, in their individual capacity, 
did all that wealth, energy, and industry could 
do, with the connivance of the British govern- 
ment, and with no little success, to destroy 
American commerce on the seas, and, by run- 
ning the blockade of Southern ports, to supply 
the Rebels with all the war material they 
needed. 

In the early stages of the War, a curious 
smile must have passed over the countenances 
of these silent partners of the Rebel firm, on 
reading Secretary Seward's official predictions 
of the early closing of the War, founded as 
those predictions were on the Southern destitu- 
tion of arms and war material ; whereas they 
had themselves taken effectual measures to have 
this destitution supplied to satiety with the best 
arms, ammunition, and material which modern 
inventions, wealth, skill, and the workshops of 
Europe could produce. 

It appears to have been in the campaign of 
our army in Mexico, during President Polk's 
administration, that the authors of the present 
rebellion, having effectually incorporated them- 
selves with the Jackson-Buchanan party, sue- 



EUROPEAN POWERS RESTRAINED. 223 

ceeded in appropriating that political organiza- 
tion to their exclusive use. It was probably at 
the Ostend Conference, held by our diplomats 
in Europe during President Pierce's administra- 
tion, that arrangements were perfected for in- 
corporating the monarchists of Europe, as far as 
possible, into the same combination. 

Nothing but the blast of the breath of the 
Almighty, sent forth for his own purposes, and 
for his people's sake, is rendering this Confed- 
eration abortive. 

The reigning powers of Europe (the Emperor 
of Russia never was with them in their hostility 
to this government) are not to be exactly iden- 
tified with the monarchical class. The privi- 
leges and responsibilities of power, and consid- 
erations of state, served to modify the former, 
and coerce them into a course of moderation 
and hesitancy, with which the American traitors 
had no sympathy at all, and their political allies 
in Europe had scarcely more. 

The concessions of our government, and the 
demand for bread-stuffs from the Northern 
States, deferred the consummation of active inter- 
ference for our dismemberment, until at length 
President Lincoln's adoption of the emancipa- 
tion policy, tardy as it was, so stirred the love 
of freedom in the minds of the European 



224 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

masses that such interference became impracti- 
cable. 

Thus the European allies of the traitor crew, 
next to their corrupted partisan supporters in 
the Northern States, failed them in their hour 
of need. And beyond the irritation, intimidat- 
ing, and partial and transient, though repeated 
and frequent, embarrassment imposed on Presi- 
dent Lincoln's government, and the protracting 
of the war and rendering it more exhausting to 
the North, and more entirely ruinous to the 
South, these allies have really contributed noth- 
ing to the success of the treason they under- 
took to aid. 



XXXIX. 

ROME AND THE REBELLION. 

The diabolical purposes of the European sup- 
porters of Secession in this country have found 
a frequent and characteristic exercise in sending 
across the ocean, at stated and well-timed inter- 
vals, a deluge of rumors and fabricated state- 
ments, complete and definite in circumstantial 
detail, to the effect that France and England, 
one or both, with, perhaps, other European pow- 
ers, had determined, beyond reconsideration, to 
enforce the separation called for by their admired 
and loving partners in the South. Hardly any- 
thing, during the course of the war, has been 
more trying to the nerves of patriotic men, both 
in and out of official station, than these repeated 
and perpetual electro-infernal appliances. Rea- 
son and facts disproved their claims to truth or 
sanity; but, like some mysterious apparition, 
that owes its disturbing power to its destitution 
of substance, the possibility of a European com- 
bination to crush out democracy on this conti- 
nent would, ever and anon, present itself, vast, 

225 



226 NATUKAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

threatening, and obscure. Still farther to conjure 
clown this boding apparition, and reduce this 
source of disturbing apprehension to its real 
substance and legitimate proportions, may well 
occupy the space of one or two intercurrent 
chapters that did not enter into the original 
purpose of this work. And these, while the 
j)rinter is busy on other portions of the work, 
by the light of the New York riots, the success 
of the French in Mexico, and the confessions of 
a prominent Roman Catholic reviewer, we now 
attempt to supply. 

The monarchical party in Europe, their deep 
and vital sympathy with Secession, their col- 
lusion, counsel, and cooperation wdth its man- 
agers, from its inception onward, we have be- 
fore considered. But that the Roman Catholic 
church, " drunk with the blood of saints," and, 
from the heights of power which it once occu- 
pied, long since gone down under the universal 
execrations of all who were unblinded by its 
imbruting contact, should come forth, at this 
late day, and complicate itself with the con- 
federate enemies of all civil freedom, was not, 
till recently, supposed to be practicable. 

It is true that the debauched Northern par- 
tisans of the Southern despots have long been 
noticeably prompt and earnest to conciliate and 



DESPOTIC ATTRACTIONS. 227 

attach to themselves the foreign-born Romish 
population. That the latter were numerous, 
blind, passionate, and undivided, and, hence, 
were eminently fitted to become stock in trade 
for any unprincipled politician, was supposed to 
be reason enough to explain the eagerness with 
which they were sought. That the deep, dark 
spirit of despotism in the presiding Southern 
leaders of that party, drawn by the native sym- 
pathy of fellow-despots, fellows in guilt, was 
yearning forth toward the papacy, like the 
ascending toward the descending cone of a yet 
unjoined waterspout, was not suspected, until, 
in the hour of their greatest need, the papacy 
in Europe, the papacy in Mexico, and the grov- 
elling hell of the papacy in New York, struck 
simultaneously for the rescue of the confederate 
enemies of freedom. 

Two hundred years ago, in Bedford jail, a 
famous dreamer, whose dreams possess a definite- 
ness and verity altogether surpassing the clear- 
est vision of the most of waking observers, thus 
described the papacy, under the figure of a 
decrepit giant : " Though he be yet alive, he 
is, by reason of age, and also of the many 
shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger 
days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints that 
he can do little more than sit in his cave's 



228 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION, 

mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and 
biting his nails because he cannot come at 
them." 

A divinely-inspired writer, at a much earlier 
date, uncovering the then historic future of the 
world, presents the papacy in the form of " a 
beast having seven heads and ten horns, the 
body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the 
mouth of a lion ; and receiving his power, his 
seat, and great authority, from the dragon " that 
represented civil despotism ; from which dragon, 
also, the beast appears to have received the 
healing of a " deadly wound." Now no fact in 
modern history is more patent than that the 
papacy and civil despotism have long been 
leagued to support each other. So that it is not 
to be expected that one of these should receive 
a deadly wound, and the other would not writhe, 
and strive, as far as in its power, to heal its 
wounded partner. If Jeff Davis & Co., the des- 
perate and determined champions of new-born 
despotism on this continent, after having ex- 
hausted the applications of the most unscrupu- 
lous military tyranny, to extort farther assistance 
from the impoverished, denuded, and devastated 
South, are being badly whipped, and on the point 
of hopeless overthrow before the advancing 
flushed, and stalwart armies of the North, noth- 



DESPOTIC SYMPATHY. 229 

ing is more natural, hardly anything more 
necessary, than that the seven-head eel beast, the 
decrepit giant, should be in motion, to accom- 
plish what is possible to be done for their 
deliverance. 

Hence we see that wily despot on the throne 
of France, — who, in his Italian campaign, went 
just far enough to receive the confidence of the 
popular masses, far enough to gain the credit of 
yielding to just so much of the pressure in favor 
of popular freedom as it was past his power to 
resist, far enough to humble a dangerous rival^ 
and to reduce the papacy to a position in which 
it must know and feel that the continuance of 
its existence was an imperial gift, — now in the 
hour of greatest peril to the slave-holders' des- 
potism, is found, by favor of the church of Rome, 
establishing a military despotism in the city of 
Mexico, and pouring along our Southern borders 
a naval and military force limited by nothing 
but his own discretion. 

Simultaneously with this, evidently in obedi- 
ence to orders issued from the Confederate cap- 
ital, through the traitor leaders of the despotic * 
party in the Northern States, New York City, 
for successive days and nights, was committed 
to the tender mercies of a Roman Cathohc mob, 

* See Appendix B, at the close of the volume. 
20 



230 NATUEAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 

describing which, an eminent literary writer* 
who walked among them, hour after hour, uses 
the following language : "' Tipsy women and 
boys (of whom the crowd was more than half 
composed) — the whole air and behavior of this 
wicked and dirty plurality expressed an exulting 
lawlessness and defiance — hives of sickness and 
vice. It is wonderful to see, and difficult to 
believe, that so much misery and disease and 
utter wretchedness could be huddled together, 
— lewd, but pale and sickly, young women, 
scarcely decent in their ragged attire, were im- 
pudent, and scattered everywhere in the crowd ; 
numbers deformed, numbers made hideous by 
self-neglect and infirmity; numbers paralytics; 
drunkards, imbecile, or idiotic, forlorn in their 
poverty-stricken abandonment of the world — 
hideous, with hope and vanity all gone — the 
female form and features made frightful by sin, 
squalor, and debasement. There were no decent 
Irish among them. Irish they all were, — every 
one of them, — but they were the dirty, half- 
drunken, brutal rowdies. In ordinary life, such 
fellows sneak about and hide from daylight in 
places where they can drink and debauch and 
contrive wickedness ; but here, where this grand 
fire made them feel like masters, and gave them 

* N. P. Willis, of the Home. Journal. 



EFFECTS OF ROMANISM. 231 

impudence for the hour, they were pictures of 
saucy beggars, half-clrunken brutes, and robbers, 
longmg to put a clutch upon your throat, and 
empty your pockets. One cf our daily papers 
estimates this class of New York population at 
twenty thousand." 

Outside the confines of the grossest heathen- 
ism, nothing but the debasing spiritual despotism 
of the Romish church has power to produce the 
subject for such a portraiture, — has power to 
prepare and furnish the instrument for such a 
desperate and dastardly assault on all that per- 
tains to human well-being. It is the peculiar 
province and ability of that ^-mother of harlots" 
to reduce the worthiest races of the human fam- 
ily to a condition of depravity and vice and 
suffering wretchedness, and to endow them with 
dispositions of fiendish wantonness, to which not 
the savage state, the brute creation, nor hardly 
slavery itself, affords a parallel. Of all who have 
enjoyed the precious advantages of mature de- 
mocracy, it is peculiar to the heart and habits of 
the despotized and traitorous Northern partisan? 
of Southern despots, to order, and control, and 
put into active operation, the instrument which 
the papacy had provided for desolating the city of 
New York at the particular juncture when Lee, 



232 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

the military leader of the Confederate hosts, was 
invading Pennsylvania, Semmes, with his British 
cruisers, was burning American commerce at the 
moulhs of Northern harbors, and the British 
press and ministry, with the subtle Frenchman 
joining in, were blowing their strongest, heartiest 
blast in favor of recognizing as real the assumed 
nationality and independence of the Confederate 
slaveocracy. This was also the point of time at 
which Napoleon III. first openly expressed him- 
self possessed of the power and the will, by 
papal aid, to erect Mexico into a permanent 
despotism on our Southern border. 

Read now a specimen of the style in which 
the papal priests and periodicals pronounce in- 
sidious curses on all that remains of civil free- 
dom, and declare theh^ admiration for the '' gal- 
lant and noble " despots of the South who are 
forcing their poor white population on, to be 
slaughtered by hecatombs, to render their own 
and negro slavery perpetual. 

Says the " Metropolitan Record " of July 18th : 
^^The Washington despotism has at length de- 
termined on testing its power over the people 
of the Northern States. The conscription has 
commenced ! For the first time in the history 
of this Republic, American freemen are to be 
drafted like the veriest slaves of the most 
crushing European despotism. 



ROMISH PATRIOTISM. 233 

" Will the men of the North submit to this 
monstrous attempt to fasten upon them a per- 
manent military despotism ? Is it possible they 
are ready to submit to the yoke ? We trust not. 

" We have no hesitation in saying, that if the 
people submit to be drafted, to carry out the 
avowed policy of confiscation and emancipation, 
that the last vestige of American freedom will 
be swept away forever. We are heart and soul 
opposed to the conscription. 

"We shall never, under any circumstances, 
raise an arm against the South. We do not 
seek to disguise our admiration for that gallant 
and noble people, and sooner than see them 
subjected to the abolition yoke, (!)* we would 
prefer perpetual separation." 

In evasion (or defiance) of the law of Con- 
gress, punishing resistance to the draft, and of 
the authorities on whom it devolves to execute 
that law, such is the present uniform and con- 
tinuous utterance, not of one organ only, but 
of the class of Roman Catholic periodicals in 
this country, of which the ordinary function is 
to proclaim the dictates of inflillibility to sev- 
eral millions of blind, unquestioning subordi- 

*" Abolition yoke," — a solecism eminently fit to be iittei-ed by the organ 
of a power, of whicli John, the Eevelator, said, that of old she trafficked in 
" wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and 
souls of men." 

20* 



234 NATUKAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION. 

nates, filling the place and enjoying the privi- 
leges, and invested with the governing influence 
of American freemen. 

It may be recollected by many who will read 
these pages, that a few years ago a thrill almost 
of terror ran through the Roman Catholic com- 
munities of Europe, on waking to a conscious- 
ness of the fact that some one or two hundred 
thousand of the unsuspecting and unsuspected 
devotees of their religion were annually migrat- 
ing to this country, of whom a large proportion 
became gradually alienated, and eventually re- 
nounced their allegiance to Rome's spiritual 
despotism. 

No one who is at all acquainted with the 
character or history of the papacy would be 
backward to believe that such a leak as this, 
running out from her numbers and her strength, 
would be sure to be effectually provided against. 
Neither would it be matter of surprise to such 
a one, that no flourish of trumpets was sounded 
over that efiectual provision, as is likely to be 
the case in a democratic community when any- 
thing of public importance is accomplished. 

But after the lapse of quiet years, we now 
have a glimpse of what has been undertaken to 
check this out-go, and also of its success. In 
addition to almost all possible appliances to 



ROMISH VERACITY. 235 

retain among themselves the instruction of 
their youth, to counteract the influence which 
our free institutions naturally exert on them-, 
and to retain the membership of their commun- 
ion in devout and blind and degraded depen- 
dence on their appointed priests, an able corps 
of priestly and editorial authorities have been 
provided (native Americans, where such could 
possibly be procured), upon the occurrence of 
such a juncture in our nation's affairs as that 
above described, so to put the authority, the 
sanctity, and the powerful superstition of the 
papal church in requisition as to insure from 
the Roman Catholic millions of our Northern 
population, an unqualified acceptance, as simple 
truth, of a diabolical tissue of treason and false- 
hood like that before quoted. 

The individual, or conclave, who framed the 
statements quoted, dictate to those Romish mil- 
lions, to be received and acted on as true, that 
the government of the United States as admin- 
istered by President Lincoln is a " despotism," 
because it is attempting to keep up its armies 
by conscription. The ground, and the only 
ground, for this malignant falsehood, is the des- 
potic nature of the organization and measures, 
without which military force does not and can- 
not exist for any purpose whatsoever. It is not 



236 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

only that said government does not dissolve it- 
self into non-existence at the first challenge of 
armed and perjured traitors, but that, after 
having exhausted the North by calling for, and 
receiving, during the past twenty-eight months 
of the war, a million and a half of men, of 
whom perhaps one-half are lost to the service 
by disease and casualties, and the rest are retir- 
ing by the expiration of their terms of enlist- 
ment ; and, after having exhausted the North 
by an expenditure of money quite in propor- 
tion to the number of men, now, at the com- 
bined summons of the bloody despots of the 
South, their despotized and traitorous partisans 
of the North, the lying and pirate-nursing aris- 
tocracy of Europe, and the crippled beast upon 
the seven hilts, the " Washington " government 
does not j)erform voluntary suicide for the tech- 
nical objection to its necessary course, that it is 
despotic to draft ! 

Military organization is despotic in form to 
the highest degree. It is highly despotic to put 
one man under the absolute and almost uncon- 
ditional authority of another, as is done in every 
military company, and without doing which no 
military command or power exists. It is des- 
potic to say to citizens outside the army ranks, 
you shall so restrict your indulgence in freedom 



THE '^ WASHINGTON DESPOTISM." 237 

of speech, and of the press, as not to convey 
military information to the enemy, nor create 
insubordination in our army ranks, nor discour- 
age enlistments, nor resist a draft, when ordered. 
Yet, all these features of despotism are inci- 
dent to, and inseparable from, the first and sim- 
plest exercise of military strength. Jefferson 
Davis and his perjured fellows, C. L. Yallandig- 
ham, the prince of Ohio Copperheads, '-^ the edi- 
tors of the "Metropolitan Record " and "Boston 
Pilot," and the Rouiish ecclesiastics who dictate 
what these editors shall, and w^hat they shall not 
say, all knew and understood this perfectly well 
when they first combined by military force to 
attack the United States government. It w^as 
an original part of their diabolical contrivance, 
first, by making an armed assault, to force upon 
the administration the inevitable and perfectly 
foreseen necessity of resorting to this formally 
despotic exercise of power to defend its veriest 
existence ; and then, as soon as this exercise of 
power was resorted to, through the agency of 
these Copperhead and Eomish operators in the 
loyal States, to raise a perfect hallabaloo about 
the " despotism of the Washington government." 
This is no fancy operation. It is a war measure 
of the first importance. If, by this outcry 

* See Appendix D. 



238 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

against the government, a majority of the vo- 
ters can be deluded into disfavoring voluntary 
enlistments, and into resisting a draft, then, 
even at this late day, and after all our victories, 
and our exhaustion, the national name and life 
and hope expire by suicide in ignominious 
chaos; and the leagued powers of Despotism 
and Popery triumph by malignant guile. 

During the self-same hour, in which military 
power in the Southern Confederacy is forcing 
every man within its reach, between the ages 
of sixteen and forty-five, — or sixty, as some of 
their edicts say, — to take up arms and lay down 
their lives, if success should require, for the ex- 
tinction of free government, this accredited 
mouth-piece of the papacy exhorts his followers 
to aid and succor the same cause, by not sub- 
mitting to be drafted into the army which is 
fighting for the only democratic government on 
earth ; which drafting he amuses himself, and 
attempts to deceive them, by calling " a mon- 
strous attempt to fasten upon them a permanent 
military despotism." 

In the same style of veracity he goes on not 
only to call the confiscation of the property 
and the freeing of the slaves of Eebel despots, 
'^ the sweeping away of the last vestige of 
American freedom," — but he also goes farther to 



PAPAL UNANIMITY. 239 

say — what no one could doubt, unless it might 
be those who were stupid enough to believe 
what he had already stated — that ^-'he would 
never, under any circumstances, raise an arm 
aci:ainst the South." 

He admires the '^ noble gallantry" of seven 
and three-fourth millions of abject whites, driven 
and slaughtered like sheep, by a few thousand 
slave drivers, for their own purposes; and rather 
than see the aims of these few cruel, bloody 
despots defeated, he would ^* prefer perpetual 
separation," which is all they ask us at present 
to grant. 

While these more secular organs of the jia- 
pacy are thus putting light for darkness, and 
darkness for light, truth for falsehood, and false- 
hood for truth, despotism for democracy, and de- 
mocracy for despotism, with the sanction of 
infallibility before the Catholic millions of our 
Northern population, at the crisis of the strife, 
the Pope himself and his highest American 
prelate are with all earnestness addressing the 
same class for the same end, but in less simple 
terms. Their saintly lips do not say, with the 
"Record," that they desire above all things, a 
separation of the Union, assured, as they are, that 
separation and destruction are in this connec- 
tion perfectly synonymous terms. But they ex- 



240 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

hort to "peace," whichj at this juncture in the 
progress of the war, and in the ears of those 
whom they address, they know perfectly well 
means nothing else but resistance to the United 
States government, and submission to whatever 
despot traitors in arms see fit to demand. 



XL. 

ROME AND THE REBELLION — FRANCE, AUSTRIA, AND ENG- 
LAND AT A GAME IN MEXICO. 

As, in speaking of Europe's complications with 
the Confederate enemies of free government on 
this continent, we find it needful to discriminate 
between the democratic and the despotic classes 
where despotism is still dominant, so in speaking 
of the part wdiich papists are taking in this war, 
we need to distinguish those in whom the love 
of civil freedom has more controlling force than 
papal dictation. These are in a position of per- 
plexing trial. They need, and are worthy to 
receive, a double portion of the sympathy and 
cordial countenance of freedom's less embar- 
rassed friends. 

Whether they can make an extract of the 
Eoman Catholic church, which will bear any 
traceable resemblance to the original, and will 
yet be compatible with coexisting and cooperat- 
ing civil democracy, and which may be called 
papacy Americanized, remains to be seen. The 
probabilities are that the Roman Catholic church 
is too deeply and durably identified with tempo- 

21 241 



242 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

ral and spiritual despotism to retain a cognizable 
lineament of its former self, in any adapted form, 
that will be endurable to a sincere- and intelli- 
gent adherent of American democracy. 

Roger B. Taney, though born and educated a 
Romanist, was an American in principle ; and 
though for thirty years a cooperator with those 
whose plots against democracy ripened at last 
into overt treason, yet it was his friendship for 
slave-holders, and not his love of the papacy, 
that made him such. 

Major General Wm.. S. Rosecrans, though said 
to have been led by a professedly Protestant 
chaplain of West Point Academy into the papal 
communion, has not yet been inoculated with 
papal politics, or induced to debase the native 
nobleness of his nature, or abandon the dictates 
of his superior judgment for the behests of a 
polluted and suborned ecclesiastical authority. 
Would that we knew as much Avere true of his 
younger brother, the bishop ! Each of these 
represents large classes entitled to our kindest 
sympathy, and many of them to our gratitude 
and our confidence, in whose bosoms, with more 
or less consciousness of what is going on, the 
war between Democracy and Despotism must 
rage till either their American politics, or their 
Romish religion, is given to the winds.* 

* Soe Appendix G. 



MEXICO AND SOUTH AMERICA. 243 

But what of the French in Mexico? The 
God of heaven and the revelations of time 
alone can inform ns, save that the wearing 
anguish of perpetual intestine strife appears 
likely to mark the future, as it has absorbed the 
past, of that unhappy country. The papacy, 
and not slavery has there been and still is the 
depository of despotic principles and purposes 
The leading spirits of that hoary hierarchy have 
ordained and ordered the forces on the side of 
despotism, which have kept the portions of this 
continent, south of the United States, in blood 
and turmoil ever since their inhabitants attained 
enough of freedom's fire to throw off the yoke 
of Inquisitorial Spain. That those papal agen- 
cies vrill be less despotic, or less disturbing, now 
that France and Austria have united their mate- 
rial military and naval resources in their support, 
is not to be expected. The forces on the side of 
freedom in those latitudes have not been nour- 
ished and guided, as in the North, by the accept- 
ed light and strengthening influence of divine 
Pvevelation, and hence are blind and feeble com- 
pared with the Northern adherents of freedom's 
cause. But that they will die out quietly under 
the impact of the iron heel, after having sus- 
tained themselves under every disadvantage for 
near half a century, is hardly to be expected ; 



244 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

althouorli the biindinof, debasino- contact of the 
Romish religion is vastly more efhcicnt to over- 
come popular resistance, by its paralj^zing, fes- 
tering, infectious corruptions, than any monarchy 
is to overcome such resistance by military force. 

That the brace of first-class despots who have 
now assumed by favor of the papacy to preside 
over the destinies of Mexico should attempt to 
amuse themselves and divert the attention of 
their restive subjects by bringing on in that 
neighborhood a first-class conflict upon the stand- 
ing issue, — Despotism or Democracy, — is per- 
haps entirely within the limits of probability. 

That the ruling intellect in European politics 
is really aiming to demolish the British power, 
and, as preliminary to this, with Britain's coun- 
tenance and Britain's aid, intends to reduce the 
United States to a condition of feebleness which 
will render the principal undertaking safe ; that 
the continental powers are now being conciliated 
and combined with that intent ; that, with the 
same intent, secret emissaries are inducincic Ens^- 
land, under an ignored queen and a suborned and 
dotaged ministry, to launch, equip, and sustain 
an endless succession of first-class war vessels, 
under color of a Rebel flag and a mocking pre- 
tence of neutrality, to threaten the ports and 
prey upon the commerce of the United States ; 



napoleon's designs. 245 

that the hastily-assumed and equivocally-main- 
tained neutrality of France and England was, 
with the same intent, designed to allow this 
country, as far as possible, to exhaust itself in 
mternal strife, preparatory to foreign assault, — 
these are among the facts of current history 
that appear to be fast passing from the stage of 
occultation/-' What the hand of Death or Des- 
tiny may do, meanwhile, to mar the perfect- 
ness or still the activity of that master brain; 
what the liberty-loving mass in its home em- 
pire may do to derange the projects of foreign 
war ; what the exasperated venom of the 
Mexican races may yet essay and achieve to 
free themselves a second time from a foreign 
yoke and groundless usurpation, — these are ele- 
ments which time alone can supply for a cal- 
culation of final results. But that all which 

* As well might an artist attempt to fix the form and color of each sum- 
mer cloud, as a historian to note the designs of European iiilers. After 
Louis Napoleon took armed possession of the city of Mexico, and offered 
the crown of a conquered empire to Maximilian, the Archduke of Austria, 
with every prospect of its being accepted, but a few Aveeks elapsed before, 
accoi-ding to one of our best newspaper authorities, the Austrian Emperor 
found himself able to combine a European alliance against Napoleon, and 
the offered crown was rejected; leaving Mexico, like the elephant drawn in 
a lottery, on Napoleon's hands, to be retained, or disposed of as best it 
might. Thus brightening, somewhat, the obvious prospect that the Amei'i- 
can Union would yet survive, not because Europe's despots were less prin- 
cipled against democracy, but because the scheme their late leading intel- 
lect had concocted for giving effect to their common principles adverse to 
democracy had been fi-u3trated by the vii-ulence of their old home jeal- 

21* 



246 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

tlie foregoing pages contain, respecting a des- 
potism upon our borders, will apply to the 
offshoot of the French empire on a throne in 
Mexico is undeniable ; although the boundary 
between ourselves and Mexico is not so ut- 
terly impalpable as the boundary must needs 
be between different se2:ments of the severed 
Union ; and the question of returning fugi- 
tive slaves would not be likely to be an open 
ulcer all along that boundary in the case of a 
despotism in Mexico, as it would be in the case 
of a slave-holding despotism on the soil of the 
former Union. 



i 



XLI 



GENERAL RESUME- 



We have now completed the detailed presen- 
tation of the chief topics intended for the present 
work. We here glance over them collectively. 

The passing away of monarchy involves the 
greatest change to which human society is liable. 
The rise and establishing of popular government 
is a dehcate and exceedingly critical occurrence, 
peculiar to the present age of the world. It is 
necessarily opposed by all that remains of the 
dying energies of hoary, and hitherto unantago- 
nized, coercive government. 

Each of these species of civil society, in its 
nature, tends to become universal, — as a healthy 
specimen of animal organization tends to the 
attainment of its normal dimensions, — and con- 
suming conflict must occur on every border 
where they come in contact. 

This continent was reserved practically vacant 
for the theatre whereon the new form of social 

life "a Church without a Bishop, and a State 

without a King " — should take its rise. 

This new form of social life is spontaneous in 



248 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

its origin, continuancej and action. It is little 
else than a negative, — the mere absence of 
monarchy in a civilized community, with barely 
latent, organic life enough to render that absence 
perpetual. Its greatness, its importance, its prac- 
tical effects, and the points " wherein its great 
strength lieth," are, to the present time, but 
very imperfectly understood. The unparalleled 
growth and affluence of this nation are its novel 
and peculiar product. The Constitution of these 
United States is the first great, permanent ex- 
pression of its new existence. 

Defended by surrounding oceans, — which 
steam and electricitj', harnessed by the inventive 
genius which its own generous nourishings de- 
veloped, had not yet reduced to insignificance, — 
it rose to maturity and strength before the fam- 
ily of ancient monarchies became aware of its 
dangerous antagonism ; and, by the time they 
began to take alarm, their subject millions had 
become so permeated with the leaven of its 
presence as to paralyze the arm with which 
those monarchies would otherwise have struck 
for its destruction. 

But it is not the order of divine procedure 
that anything designed for universal spread and 
perpetual prevalence should rise and reign 
wholly unresisted. Like the hardy oak, this 



WHERE SECESSION BEGUN. 249 

new form of civil life needed a trying blast to 
give it consistency and strength, to cause its 
roots to strike down graspingly beneath the sur- 
face soil, and to purge its texture from the ele- 
ments of premature decay. 

At an early day in the history of the planting 
of civilized colonists on this continent, a few 
ebon seeds of African social life — than which 
earth has produced none more vicious — were 
transported, and planted in the rich soil of the 
watered garden of American freedom. Here 
they nestled quietly till the first crisis of our 
nation's birth and infant feebleness were jDassed ; 
all the time multiplying luxuriantly and combin- 
ing themselves with elements of j)ower which 
the old world could not have produced. The 
sunshine and the shov/ers of this most peaceful 
and prolific clime gave them colossal proportions 
and giant strength. Africa supplied the servile 
mass, and, by its presence, American freemen, 
who would otherwise have scorned to exercise an 
authority to which they would not themselves 
submit, were turned into masters, tyrants, des- 
pots. The strongest, most vital, most excellent 
material which unfettered, bounteous America 
could produce became quickened with the en- 
venomed life of the darkest, vilest despotism 
that ever cursed the most barren and remote 
extremity of the Eastern continent. 



250 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

Democracy, which affords such unexampled 
privileges to the individual, presents the lowest, 
least organic form of civil life. It has neither 
eyes nor ears nor any other sense by which to 
take alarm, until it has long felt the pangs of 
protracted injury. 

The viperous despotism, called into existence 
by the presence of that abject mass from Africa, 
had already taken into its ravenous maw, digest- 
ed, and incorporated into itself the whole poor 
white population of the slave-holding States — 
had broken their bones, charmed or magnetized, 
and slabbered over, ready to devour, a vast polit- 
ical party in the North, — part of whom, like the 
poor whites in the South, prove to have been al- 
ready digested and appropriated, — and its gory 
fangs were already darted at the carotid artery 
of our nation's life, before serious alarm was 
taken, or any effort made in national self- 
defence. 



XLII. 

SKETCH OF FVEXTS INITIATING THE REVOLT. 

In approaching some conclusions from the 
preceding, — conclusions bearing on our future 
civil duty as loyal citizens, — the connecting of 
events with causes will not be avoided. 

Where there are slaves, there must be mas- 
ters. Where there are masters, there must, 
presently, be despots. Wherever there is a des- 
pot, there must be a great and growing sub- 
mission to his dictation, or else there ivill he ivar, 
one or the other, every time the experiment 
is tried, " now, from henceforth, and forever- 
more." 

When, by the rapid influx of Northern popu- 
lation into California, the Southern despots 
found themselves baffled in their attempts to 
add that State to their peculiar dominions, they 
saw that the time was drawing near at which 
they must quietly relinquish their usurped con- 
trol of the general government, or break up the 
Union. Quietly to relinquish usurped power, is 
one thing that despots never do. Popular free- 



252 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

dom in the North was so absorbing the influx of 
foreign immigration, and was proving itself so 
prolific of all that constitutes the resources of a 
nation's strength, that it became apparent no 
time was to be lost. They were fast sinking 
into a powerless minority. Judging others by 
themselves, they knew of no reason why the 
gross abuses of power which they and their po- 
litical coadjutors had been practising toward 
their opponents should not soon be practised 
back on themselves in turn. 

They repealed the Missouri Compromise, and 
inaugurated the politico-military strife in Kansas, 
w^ith some hope of adding that State to their 
relatively waning minority ; and with the inten- 
tion of turning the strife into a general civil 
war, in case of failure. They failed in both the 
main and substitute design. The " Yankees " 
were too shrewd to fight w^hile the general gov- 
ernment was yet in the hands of their antago- 
nists. Nothing was left them but to strike for 
separation, by all means, and at all hazards. 
Their corrupted partisans at the North, acting 
under the blasphemed name of Democracy ,=^ 
enabled them to retain usurped control of 
the general government until its army and 
navy had been rendered useless, its treasury 

* See Appendix B. 



treason's crisis. 253 

robbed and bankrupted, its arsenals rifled, and 
all but two of its fortifications in the Southern 
States clearly within their reach. The hour had 
come for decisive action. On the peaceable sur- 
render of these two forts hung the, momentous 
sequence of peace or war. Thus near had the 
Southern despots come to the accomplishment 
of the first great act in their programme, — sepa- 
ration, without resorting to the arbitrament of 
the- sword. All this had been accomplished dur- 
ing the administration of that prince of Loco- 
focos, James Buchanan, wdio lay in the hands of 
his Southern advisers as a pine-knot lies in the 
maw of an alligator, till everything but the least 
digestible part of its woody fibre, has been ex- 
tracted. James Buchanan, wdio had done every 
other thing that the Southern despots had desired 
of him, did not actually issue orders for Forts 
Sumter and Pickens to surrender, and the trai- 
tors, somewhat unexpectedly, found these two 
places in the hands of men who did not see fit 
to surrender them unordered, without having a 
fight first. As Buchanan's administration drew 
near its close, the traitors, — with whom it had 
been the main business of his term to cooper- 
ate, — having completed all that they could ex- 
pect to accomplish covertly, having thrown off 
disguise, confessed their perjury, (and, in " seced- 

22 



254 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

ing," the several Southern States allowed their 
real character and design to become appar- 
ent,) judged it prudent, one by one, to resign 
their offices, leave the capital, and go South ; 
thus leaving the old knot — from which they 
lacked the chemistry to make any farther ex- 
tract, and which still represented the vital head 
of the government — to fall into other hands. 
And thus the nation was stayed up from falUng 
to pieces through Buchanan's unfathomable inef- 
ficiency, or treason, as the case may be. 

Had BQchanan, like his immediate predeces- 
sor, been subject to the influence of strong drink, 
probably the traitors could have accomplished 
all that they could have desired, in his name, 
and by his presidential authority ; and the com- 
manders of Forts Sumter and Pickens would 
have received orders to evacuate. But when 
Buchanan was placed in nomination as the presi- 
dential candidate of the Loco-foco party, Fremont, 
the opposing candidate, was so popular, and the 
accumulated iniquities of the party, under the 
then existing administration, had become so 
enormous, as to make the result of the election 
extremely doubtful ; and, in order to secure the 
vote of the great State of Pennsylvania, it be- 
came necessary for the party to accept her fa- 
vorite son as their candidate, although in this 






WHAT MOBS ARE FOR. 255 

respect — his not being liable to be influenced 
bj strong drink — be was not exactly the man 
that was suited to the purpose for which the real 
leaders of the party designed to make use of 
him. They did not dare to restrain him of his 
liberty, and carry him South with them, because 
this course would have alienated his and their 
political coadjutors of the Buchanan stripe in 
the North. 

One trait of the despot, peculiar to the Amer- 
ican branch of that family, is, that when he has 
in hand an enterprise which he likes not to at- 
tempt himself, by personal violence, he has a 
way of raising a mob of the w^orthless and the 
desperate, to carry out his plans for him. It 
appears to be a part of their regular policy, by 
the absence of schools, and the discouragement 
of regular industrial avocations for whites, to 
keep on hand a class of this kind of characters, 
for such particular occasions. This mode of 
action gives additional plausibility to their pre- 
tence of being Democrats. Some of the most 
important transactions in the process of seceding 
the Southern States were carried through by 
this mode of operating. 

But twice in the interim between the presi- 
dential terms of Jackson and Buchanan, has 



256 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

their party failed to elect its presidential candi- 
date. And neither of these two only successful 
candidates who opposed that party survived his 
inauguration more than a few weeks or months, 
before he fell in death, — a victim, as the people, 
in their democratic simplicity supposed, of ordi- 
nary disease. 

Sure, one there was, who suspected foul play 
in the first of these instances, and who never 
doubted it in the second. And now, vie win 2: 
the cases of sudden demise, so opportune for 
the party which was aided by them, in the light 
of their immense importance to the plans which 
have since been developed, and in the light of 
the means which have since been resorted to by 
their authors, to carry these plans into execu- 
tion, no candid mind, competent to comprehend 
the evidence in the case, can doubt but that the 
deaths of those presidents in office were pro- 
cured by a quiet mode of assassination. Presidents 
Harrison and Taylor were the only two who 
ever died in office, and were the only two who 
succeeded in interrupting the reign of that party 
dynasty, whose otherwise unbroken prevalence 
for thirty years has matured in the scenes of 
treason, desolation, and blood, that now crush 
our afflicted land. 

But aside from the connection in which the 



AMERICAN DESPOTISM. 257 

attempt stands catalogued, it is matter of noto- 
rious history that a band was leagued, and a 
mob prepared, to waylay and dispose of the 
present chief magistrate of the nation as he 
approached the capitol for inauguration ; at the 
same time beleaguering that city and cutting 
off communication from the North, taking pos- 
session of the city of Baltimore, and forcing the 
State of Maryland out of the Union. 

Despots of the American type are accustomed 
to succeed in whatever they think it worth their 
effort seriously to attempt. When they fail, it 
is generally safe to conclude that no subtlety, 
however acute, no watchfulness, however unre- 
mitting, no code of morals, however lax, no ap- 
plication, however assiduous, no exertion, how- 
ever desperate, and no scheme, however diaboli- 
cal, could have secured success. The fierceness 
of the throes of dying despotism consume the 
fountains of whatever is just or gentle in the 
individual supporters of that doomed cause. 

22* 



XLIII. 

SEPARATION OF THE DESPOTIC FROM THE DEMOCRATIC ELE- 
MENTS IN THE LONG-DOMINANT PARTY — CONDITIONS OF 
PEACE. 

By moving with celerity on an unusual line 
of travel; the President elect arrived in Wash- 
ing-ton unassassinated, unseized. President Bu- 
chanan, in the new hands into which he had 
fallen when the traitors let him drop, even fa- 
vored the peaceful inauguration of his lawfully- 
elected successor ; and Mr. Lincoln was duly and 
peaceably inaugurated at the usual time, though 
in the presence of an efficient military guard. 

Thus the shattered and almost exthiguished 
remnant of the United States government passed 
from the usurping grasp of the political party 
which, headed and handled by a few slave-hold- 
ing despots, had used that government for their 
own selfish and sinister purposes, with little in- 
terruption, for the last thirty years; and, during 
the last eight of these years, with the scarcely 
disguised intention of compassing its destruc- 
tion. 

This relinquishment of power was not at this 

25ft 



PARTY SPLIT DESIGNED. 259 

time necessary, but voluntary, at least on the 
part of leaders of that long-dominant party. 
They supposed they had effectually destroyed 
the power, and were relinquishing only the shad- 
ow of its form. They little doubted that their 
party adherents in the North were so thoroughly 
corrupted,* and that the Middle States would 
find themselves so distracted, that they who laid 
and launched the plot, Avith the extreme South 
already imder their undisputed despotism, could 
dispose of the rest at pleasure ; at least, could 
cast them off at will, and by the aid of their 
friends, the despotic classes in Europe, could es- 
tablish a concentrated government that would 
defy reaction. 

On the 23d of April, 1860, the Convention of 
the long-dominant party met at Charleston, 
South Carolina, to select a candidate to be voted 
for by the party, as Mr. Buchanan's successor. 
The leaders of that party, there assembled, con- 
trolled the majority — almost the entire vote — of 
every Southern State except a trifling defection 
on the border, and they controlled enough of 
the Northern States to make the election of 
their candidate reasonably certain, had they 
chosen to harmonize and act together as form- 
erly. A few formal compliments, paid by the 

* See Appendix C. 



260 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

Southern despots to prominent Northern parti- 
sans, would have secured this harmony, and 
another Frank Pierce or James Buchanan could 
have been made president. But such was not 
the result desired. One Frank Pierce, succeeded 
by one James Buchanan, had accomplished all 
that the Southern despots had for such men t6 
do, namely, to put the country in a state of 
complete preparedness for dissolution. The des- 
potic principles and tastes of the Southrons had 
become matured. They could no longer endure 
a fettering combination with even corrupt, ve- 
nal, traitorous, or deceived Democracy.* If their 
Northern friends would join them and arm for a 
consuming conflict with the mother of repub- 
lics, well and good. If they would go home, 
and in the several wards and counties manfully 
resist all efforts to arrest the movements about 
to be entered on in the South, this service 
would also be very acceptable. But the unnat- 
ural and mutually-loathed union of despotism 
and democracy that had prevailed ever since 

* Robert Toombs publishes a letter in a Georgia paper, saying, — "I can 
conceive of no extremity to whicli my country could be reduced in which I 
would for a single moment entertain any proposition for any union with the 
North on any terms whatever. When all else is lost, I prefer to unite with 
the thousands of our own countrymen who have found honorable deaths, if 
not gi-aves, on the battle-field." As Mr. Toombs is a favorite among the 
peace men of the North, it might be well that they make a note of his sen- 
timents. ■*— Boston Journal^ September lUk, 1863. 



WHY THE PARTY WAS SPLIT. 261 

the rise of the cotton-trade infused vitality and 
strength into the shive system was now drawing 
near its termination. The set time for launch- 
ing a plot for its dissolution had arrived. The 
old Jackson-Buchanan, or "loaves-and-fishes" par- 
ty as it was termed by an early critic of its 
course, had answered well its end ; but, like the 
typical dispensation in religion, at the coming 
of the great Antitype, was to pass away, or lin- 
ger out an anomalous and effete existence, op- 
posed alike to the clear light and decisive action 
of the two great political verities, which, like 
Paganism and Christianity, were thenceforth to 
divide the held between them, till the one or 
the other became extinct. 

The separation of the two great elements 
must of necessity take place in the long-domi- 
nant party, as well as in the government proper. 
As the sundering of the party did not involve 
the crime of perjury or treason, and would not 
necessitate war, it was resolved to initiate the 
grand separation in that party, and the Conven- 
tion at Charleston was selected as the occasion 
for doing it. The plan was, by preventing unity 
of action, to necessitate a plurality of candi- 
dates, a division of the party vote, and the con- 
sequent success of the opposing candidate, who, 
as the South were a unit in the hands of their 



262 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

leaders, must of necessity be a sectional candi- 
date, elected by a combination of sectional par- 
ties, — this sectional feature must perfect and 
insure the Southern political unanimity, — then 
make war on the successful candidate, whoever 
he might be, before or after his inauguration, 
as chance might offer. 

The separation in the party, then and there, 
took place according to the design and purpose 
of the despot Southrons. Tliey refused longer 
to consult the interests or to conserve the wel- 
fare of the party. In vain the Northern mem- 
bers of the party offered a continuance of their 
venal services. They were rejected. The sep- 
aration was so natural, fit, and timely, — espe- 
cially since the Secession of the States it has ap- 
peared so, — that any effort to restore the party- 
union has been as unnatural and monstrous as 
would be the attempt to reverse the operation 
of nature in animal propagation, and endeavor 
to restore the breathing offspring to its former 
union with the parent from which it had been 
separated. The union of slave-mastership and 
the policy of the Jackson-Buchanan party pro- 
duced Secession by a process that admits not of 
being reversed. 

If such be the case with the political party 
that so long held the government in its custody 



CONDITION OF REUNION. 263 

that the two ahnost became one, what ground, it 
will be asked, is there to hope that the union of 
the States can ever be restored ? There is no 
ground for such a hope, not the slightest, so 
long as Despotism rules the South or any other 
portion of the States. The first and only, the 
indispensable and all-sufficient, condition of a 
restitution of the Union of the States in perpet- 
ual harmony, is a revolution of the South from 
despotism to democracy. All the fighting which 
the present War has produced or may yet pro- 
duce, that brings near this result, advances us 
by legitimate progress toward the attainment 
of permanent peace. All that fails of bringing 
near this result, is gratuitous self inflicted chas- 
tisement. It may make us more wise and mod- 
est, but in no other way than this can it Imve 
any special tendency to terminate the strife. 



XLIV. 

CONDITIONS INDISPENSABLE TO PEACE, AND PROGRESS TO- 
WARD THEIR ATTAINMENTS. 

Among the popular masses at the South, the 
absence of sagacity to perceive, and of courage 
and promptitude to resist, the usurpations of a 
mihtary despotism at the commencement of 
their secession movement proves those masses 
to be devoid of democratic principle, and radi- 
cally conformed to the condition of the subject 
masses of a despotism * Are their despotic lead- 
ers so secure in the rear that they can be reach- 
ed only by the military destruction of these 
masses ? Are these masses so devoted to their 
leaders that they will not consent to survive 
them? If either of these conditions obtain (and 
they really are but one), then must the war go 
on with unabated destructiveness till the South 
is wellnigh consumed, and the North shall have 
paid in full the meet penalty for having allowed 
a despotic corrupting of the half of its own 
home population, and for according the unction 

* For a vivid and veracious description of the process of seceding, see 
The Conspiracy Unveiled. Hunnicutt. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott 
& Co., 1863. 



THE WAR NECESSARY. 265 

of its tolerance and the shield of national pro- 
tection to the deadly asp of Despotism, till its 
own life's blood had well-nigh paid the forfeit in- 
curred by its indolent credulity. 

In view of the enormous cost and sufferino* 
which this war is inflicting, North and South, it 
may be asked whether prompt decisive action, 
at its origin, could not have arrested and hung 
its authors, and have left the Southern as well 
as the Northern masses undecimated and the 
homes of the former undevastated. Decisive 
governmental action could probably have ar- 
rested the leaders of revolt, and thereby have 
prevented the progress of the present war ; but 
this would have been only a perilous postpone- 
ment, — a damming up of a river that would 
only have increased its strength and fary, as 
long as the cause continued to act which made 
despots of the leaders of this revolt. Though 
the Southern people had been spared their pres- 
ent sufferings, the same causes, continuing to 
act, would soon produce and place at their head 
a set of leaders more despotic and desperate 
than those who are now consigning them to 
wholesale immolation. 

If a bloody or a bloodless revolution could 
have been instituted in the South, that would 
have brought the seven and three-fourths mil- 



23 



266 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

lions of non-slave-holding white popvilation in 
successful conflict with the despot few, who now 
govern that section with a rod of iron, the pres- 
ent war would have been averted. But such 
was the amount of power which slavery put 
into the hands of the despot few, — such was 
the disadvantage at which slavery placed the 
seven and three-fourths milHons of non-slave- 
holding whites, — above all, such was the vassal 
sympathy with the ruling few, into which these 
non-slave-holding milhons were brought by their 
chronic fear and hate of slaves set free, that 
nothing but, a war which prostrates alike the 
despot leader and his millions of abject whites 
can ever clear the soil for the planting of a gen- 
uine democracy. Nothing less than the suffer- 
ing and humiliation which this war is inflicting 
on the North could have brought its corrupted 
majority to consent to the establishing of that 
degree of political equality at the South Avhich 
is indispensable to the continued existence of 
democratic, or, in common terms, republican 
institutions on this continent. 

The question here intrudes itself, Must ne- 
groes vote ? It is impossible to precalculate at 
what time the elective franchise will become of 
any practical value to them ; or at what time it 
will be best for us that they should exercise it. 



NEGRO ELEVATION. 2G7 

"vYhere there is no compression, there can be no 
explosion. Where there is an arbitrary depriva- 
tion of the practically valuable rights, which, by 
the equal rule of democratic government, per- 
tain to any class, then and there comes into ex- 
istence a reacting, explosive force. This force, 
perpetually conflicting with the original, arbi- 
trary, depriving dictation, the two mutually irri- 
tate and strengthen each other till an explosive 
revolutionary outbreak is the result. 

The premature conferring of elective fran- 
chise on an abject race, as the negroes now are, 
and must long be, would only reproduce and 
multiply ten thousand fold the corrupting and 
disastrous results of conferring that franchise 
on the green, ignorant, and politically unprinci- 
pled serfs that throng to us from the shores of 
monarchical Europe. 

The prospect of thereby weakening the mil- 
itary strength of the Kebellion, together with 
the pressing menace of European powders, which 
could thereby be parried, appear to have induced 
Mr. Lincoln to proclaim emancipation to the 
greater part of the Southern slaves.=^ The dem- 
onstrated impracticability of his schemes of de- 
porting the freed negroes, the difficulty of sup- 
plying his lack of troops, and the unhealthiness 

* See Appendix A. 



268 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

of many of the locations where troops were 
necessary to be used, seem to have induced the 
tardy determination to arm the negroes. 

But, Vvliatever may have been the motive 
which induced the course of action, the first 
efficient step taken toward preserving the gov- 
ernment from the assault made on it from the 
South was the aboUshing of masters* brought 
about by emancipating the slaves ; and the first 
step taken toward preventing a recurrence of 

* Though there may be men and women in the ranks of those partisans 
of treason who are voting against President Lincohi's administration, who 
are ignorant, and hence partially innocent, of the real aim of their party- 
leaders, yet, beyond dispute, that aim is, singly and solely, by all possible 
means, to pi-event the Emancipation Proclamation from taking effect. 
Thereby redeeming the institution of slavery from the boiling, bui-ning gulf 
into which its Southern possessors had throv/n it, restoring the Loco-foco or- 
ganization, with all the Southern slave-holders gratefully owing their preser- 
vation to their Northern friends. To accomplish this result, all the infernal 
zeal that can be expended, all the falsification of facts and principles that 
may be necessary, and the blood and treasure requisite for two or three 
years' prolongation of the war, appear to be a moderate price, in the estima- 
tion of these precious gi-aduates of the political school in which they have 
been etlucatcd. " To the victors belong the spoils." 

Reuben Siout, GOth Indiana Infontry, was shot on Johnson's Island for 
desertion. He v/as allov/ed to go home on furlough. In a confession, made 
just before his death, he says : — 

" After I had been there about two weeks, I was advised by several per- 
sons not to go back to the army; they said this was only an 'Abolition 
war.' I was induced to go to a meeting of the so-called Knights of the 
Golden Circle, and was made a member of that organization. The obliga- 
tions of the order bound us to do ail wc could against the wai% — to resist 
the draft, if one should be made, and likewise to resist and oppose all confis- 
cation or emancipation measures, in every possible way. We were pledged 
to do all we could to prevent another man or dollar going from the State for 
the further prosecution of the war." 

When a squad attempted to arrest him he killed one of the party 



EFFECT OF NEGRO ELEVATION. 269 

the same assault was conferring manhood and 
elevation of character on the blacks, by admit- 
ting them into the army ranks, to fight for their 
own independence. Failing of either of these 
two necessary steps, the present war might have 
continued to the end of time without producing 
any decisive result in favor of the Union cause. 
And now, if through their Northern confeder- 
ates, the Secessionists can succeed in reversing 
either of these measures of President Lincoln's 
administration, they have a fair prospect of be- 
ing the ultimate winners, however the tide of 
victory may turn in the field. 

If the negroes prove to be so effectually freed, 
and so far elevated above their former condition, 
that no class of men can again make political 
use of them as their former masters have hith- 
erto done, doubtless the masses of the Southern 
whites, freed from their former trammels, and 
from the powerful presence of the slave-holding 
class, will adequately educate themselves and 
put on democracy spontaneously. Especially 
may this result be expected, when free inter- 
communication with the North shall have been 
established. 



XLV. 

THE STATE OF THE SOUTHERN MASSES — THE DEMONSTRATED 
AIM OF THEIR LEADERS — INEVITABLE RESULTS OF SEP- 
ARATION. 

Let us now attempt to gather into focal 
proximity the leading phenomena of Seces- 
sion. 

Apart from their blind and mad affection for 
the condensed despotism which slavery presents, 
and their cringing, suicidal, though unconscious, 
servility to the leading conservators of this des- 
potism, the non-slave-holding millions of white 
population in the South had no motive, and 
could have had no inclination, to engage in the 
present onslaught against the United States 
government. 

The victory now being contended for by the 
Southern leaders is a victory over democratic 
equality, democratic principles, and democratic 
institutions, and is as much against the rights, 
prosperity, and prospects of the masses of the 
people at the South as at the North. And noth- 
ing but the arts and coercive power peculiar 
to successful despots ever placed those South- 

270 



AIM OF SECESSION. 271 

ern masses in the ranks of the slave-holders' 
army, or still retains them there. 

Some light is thrown on the real nature and 
aim of Secession — an aim and a nature which 
must fashion its future, if it succeeds in prolong- 
ing its existence — by the fact that its authors, 
and those in behalf of whom these authors act, 
prior both to the inception^ and execution of 
their nefarious plan, were in the secure posses- 
sion of every right, privilege, and power which 
democracy could either confer or permit, and 
more. They possessed every right, privilege, and 
power they or any other set of sane men in their 
places could desire or ask, except the privilege 
and power of making war and concluding peace 
on their own sole, unadvised, unembarrassed 
motion, and of adding to the milUons of their 
slaves at pleasure, b}^ importation or conquest. 
This evinces to a demonstration that the true 
and real aim of the authors, the leaders, and the 
champions of the Secession movement is no 
other than to divide their despotism from its for- 
mer incongruous, embarrassing copartnership 
with democracy, — to place it on a basis of its 
own, free to pursue its own peculiar aims and 
tendencies, by its own peculiar modes of action. 

In doing this, they are sure that the iron or- 
ganization, and the solitary, changeless head of 



272 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

despotism, will give them incalculable advantage 
over the loose and changeable executive of a 
democracy, in the interminable wars that must 
necessarily follow the achievement of separation. 
They are also sure that a despotism can always 
surround itself with its native element, — a state 
of war, — and that this is so adverse to its antago- 
nist, that, as a democracy, though physically 
unconquered, it must eventually perish wherever 
this element permanently prevails. 

Slavery is known and admitted to be the cor- 
ner-stone of the new government to be reared 
on the Southern fragment of the divided Union.* 

The strong and growing determination of the 
Northern Democrats, after the rupture of the 
obligations that have hitherto bound them, never 
again to become the ministers or the menials of 
a despot in controlling his refractory slaves, is 
perfectly known, and matter that may be pre- 
calculated on. 

The fact that Southern slaves will be constantly 
fleeing to the North for protection and freedom 
is also a matter in respect to which there is no 
doubt or uncertainty, in case a slave-holding 
government ever stands by itself on Southern 
soil. 

* See speech of Alexander H. Stephens (Vice-President of the Southern 
Confederacy, as he is called). George Livermore's Historical Research. 
A. Williams & Company. Boston: 1863. p. 4. 



DESIGNS ON THE NORTH. 27S 

We have, then, the inevitable conclusion, that 
the men who are striving to establish this slave- 
holciing kingdom in the South depend for its 
continuance on perpetual military success, sur- 
veillance of the North, and such an extended ap- 
plication of their present policy of "retaliation " "^ 
as will compel the ever unwilling democrats of 
the Northern fragment of our former nation, to 
guarantee the integrity of their slave system. 
By how much this state of things will fall short 
of the military subjugation of the North^ it is 
worth little time or trouble to calculate. An-d 
how much is to be done by the Northern parti- 
sans of the Southern despots, in bringing about 
this state of compulsory vassalage, — in substi- 
tuting the former voluntary cooperative Union, 

* It is reported that the Rebels, in view of an immediate bombardment of 
Charleston, have removed all the Union prisoners taken at Morris Island 
and Sumter to that city, and also that prisoners have been sent from Rich- 
mond that they may be exposed to the danger of the bombardment. — 
Journal. 

Baltimore, Oct. 30. The American has a letter from a responsible 
correspondent dated Annapolis, Md., 29th, which says the flag of truce boat 
New York arrived at the Naval School Wharf this morning from City Point, 
with 1£0 paroled men; eight of the number died on the boat on its way 
here. 

They actually starved to death. Never, in the whole course of my life, 
have I seen such a scene as there was presented. They were living skele- 
tons. Every man of them had to be sent to the hospital, and the surgeon's 
opinion is that more than one-third will die, being beyond the reach of 
nourishment or medicine. I questioned several of them, and all state that 
their condition has been brought on by the treatment they have received at 
the hands of the Rebels. They have been kept Avithout food, and exposed 
a large part of the time without shelter of any kind. 



274 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

by a severed state, and a compelled rendering 
of such subordinate help as is indispensable to 
the preservation of their slave property, — is 
also unimportant, and of no modifying influence 
on the final result. The bitterness of final mili- 
tary subjugation will be little alleviated by the 
reflection that the Southern despots, who im- 
posed it, could not have succeeded without the 
aid of corrupted and traitorous partisans in our 
midst* 

* There is something damningly dishonest in the professions and the prac- 
tices of those Northern men, of the Vallandigham, Wood, and Seymour 
school^ who are unfriendly to the United States government as now admin- 
istered, and yet refuse to put their necks directly under the yoke that JefF. 
Davis is imposing on the people of his realm. They are, obviously, aiming 
to barter their countrymen, and their country, to that modern Nero, for 
positions near the throne which he is wading through " blood to the horses' 
bridles " to establish. 



XLVI. 

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS — THE CONTEMPLATED COST OF 
THE REBELLION — THE AIM THIS COST WAS FITTED TO 
SUBSERVE — RIGHT-MINDED MEN AT FAULT — THE NO- 
PUNISHMENT CLASS — ABUSE OF THE TERM DEMOCRATIC — 
DISJOINTING THE SOUTHERN MASSES FROM THEIR DES- 
POTIC LEADERS. 

Something more than appears at first view can 
be learned respecting the true nature and aims 
of Secession, by looking at the deliberate sacri- 
fices by which its authors, from the first, pro- 
posed to attain their ends. 

When we look at the movement in the light 
of these sacrifices, their extent, their deliberate- 
ness, the unreserved freedom with which they 
are offered, and the comparative insignificance 
and doubtful worth of the proposed returns, — 
it may almost be doubted whether the move- 
ment had really any other motive than a dispo- 
sition, on the part of its authors, to destroy 
everything that they had the opportunity and 
the power to reach and ruin. 

The first great item in this bill of sacrifices is, 
our nationality. It was held in common by North 
and South. It had a history, radiant with the 

275 



276 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

wisdom and prowess of our common patriot sires. 
It had a prospective future, glowing with a gor- 
geousness of promise almost beyond belief 
Though young in years, and novel in the polit- 
ical basis on which it rose, it had attained a 
respectability and influence abroad which we 
would have exchanged with no other nation. 
It was unconquerable by any external force 
that could be brought against it.- An easy- 
exercise of its military strength was sufficient to 
defend and vindicate the rights of itself and of 
its citizen, wherever threatened. The benefits 
it conferred on its citizens at home were more 
ample, rich, and costless than had ever before 
been conferred by any human government. It 
made our country the desired home and refuge 
of the oppressed of every land. It was the 
beacon-light of popular liberty to a tyrant-ridden 
world. Add to these considerations the unutter- 
able affection with which every virtuous patriot 
cleaves to the institutions, as well as to the soil, 
of his native land, and multiply the sum by the 
tens of millions of its blessed and contented 
population. All this is utterly and certainly 
destroyed by the first act of the purposed sepa- 
ration. Large fragments of the ruin may, or 
may not, remain ; may, or may not, retain some 
traces of the great original ; no one knows, 



PECUNIARY COST OF THE WAR. 277 

and, of all others, no one appears to care less 
than the Secessionist, how this may be. 

To the destruction of our nationality add the 
individual pecuniary sacrifice at which this War 
has hitherto been, and is yet to be, carried on. 
Nine hundred rnihions of dollars is the computed 
war debt of the Union government at the end 
of the first two years of war. Add to this the 
milHons that have been raised by war-tax, the 
many millions that have been voluntarily con- 
tributed for hospital and other necessary war 
expenses, the loss of income suffered by abstract- 
ing an average of nearly a million and a half 
of Northern men from their customary indus- 
trial avocations, add a proportionate outlay for 
the remaining years of the War, of whatever 
number they may be, and you have, approxi- 
mately, the Northern half of the pecuniary sac- 
rifice at which this fratricidal strife is carried on. 
Instead of estimating the Southern portion of 
the cost as nearly parallel, you might as well 
consider that the Southern army is made up, to 
a great extent, of men who were accustomed to 
earn very little by their industry, before the 
war begun, and are accustomed to receive 
little or nothing of real value for their coerced 
services in it, while it lasts. But to balance 
this reduction of the expenses of the war to 

24 



278 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

the Southern party, reflect that their section 
has to sustain the havoc and devastation of both 
armies present on their soil; that all commer- 
cial intercourse with the outer world is absolutely 
cut off, except what is carried on by blockade 
running, — a process in which three ventures cut 
of four are captured, and the successful one has 
to demand and receive a price that will pay for 
the whole ; that industrial avocations and the 
productions of the soil are reduced to the limits 
of what will barely sustain life ; that their 
slaves, whom they valued so highly as to stake 
everything else on the chance of preserving 
them in slavery, have already been, or must 
soon be, emancipated to a man, and you will 
perceive that there was more truth than poetry 
in the statement of " Vice-President " Stephens 
to the planters, that, '- in case they did not suc- 
ceed in securing their independence, nothing 
which they possessed would be worth anything." 
In other words, it will be seen that the War, as 
planned by its Southern authors, was designed, 
if unsuccessful, to involve the blank annihilation 
of the property value of everything possessed 
by Rebel owners. 

Two considerations modify the first view of 
the incalculable pecuniary sacrifice so freely of- 
fered up by the authors of Secession. First, they 



SOUTHERN DISESTEEM FOR PROPERTY. 279 

put a very light estimate on all pecuniary con- 
siderations. One efficient means, by which the 
Southern mind has been excited to war upon 
the North, has been the ridicule and contempt 
thrown on the " Yankees " for their overween- 
ing love of property. This contempt for pecun- 
iary considerations in the Southern mind, arises 
first, from the natural recklessness of one who, 
from never having earned property, has little 
appreciation of its worth; second, from a bar- 
baric indifference to that elevated civilization 
of which property is the basis, — this trait hav- 
ing been derived by the whites from their social 
participation in the uncivilized character of the 
blacks; third and last, but not least, it is the 
exhibition of that contempt for all other consid- 
erations, which naturally occupies the mind de- 
voted to the pursuit, exercise, and enjoyment of 
despotic power. 

In making, then, a just estimate of the incal- 
culable pecuniary sacrifice at which the authors 
of this Rebellion proposed to purchase their 
triumph over our repubHcan institutions, let us 
make all due allowance for their peculiar dises- 
teem for the pecuniary value of what all other 
claimants for the rank of civiHzed people esteem 
as highly valuable. 

Second : A second consideration that modifies 



280 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

the first view of this incalculable pecuniary sac- 
rifice, is the shade of uncertainty that rested on 
the fact of its being finally, and wholly, exacted. 
If Mr. Buchanan, as there was doubtless very 
strong reason to expect he would do, had or- 
dered the evacuation of Forts Sumter and Pick- 
ens, if, as there was perhaps every possible 
assurance would be the case, Mr. Buchanan's 
party in the North had stood up boldly and 
blindly for the destruction of the Union, and 
the erection and immunity of a Southern Des- 
potism, then the negro property would not all at 
once have been lost, and perhaps much of the 
present war expenses of the North and South 
would have been for a time postponed.* But 
giving due weight to this peradventure, we have 
still the absolute certainty that the original de- 
sign and determination of the despot originators 
of the revolt was, if they could not attain their 
end at less expense, to sacrifice the whole. 
This last qualifying consideration, and, per- 

* Had the authors of this Rebellion succeeded in reducing the people of 
the whole country to the condition of abject dependence in which the 
Southern masses have found themselves, and had they succeeded in doing 
this before the torpid democracy of the Northern States became alanned, 
and before blood had been shed, then, according to the logic of all past 
time, whatever of disaster and suffering might have been incuiTcd in ren- 
dering their usurped supremacy perpetual would have been chargeable, not 
to the despots themselves, who should fight " to maintain necessary and 
wholesome government," but to the " rebellious turbulence " of their subjects 
who should fight to rid themselves of ' wholesome and necessary restraints.' 



THE SACRIFICE OF LIFE. 281 

haps, to some extent, the one preceding it, ap- 
ply also to the third great item in the bill of 
sacrifices deliberately offered by the authors of 
the present war, which is, the sacrifice of human 
life which it involves. 

The data are not at hand from which to esti- 
mate the expense in human life at which this 
terrible War has been thus far prosecuted, much 
less can w^e now calculate the bill of mortality 
which will be presented at its close. 

The Union government has called for and 
received for military and naval service a million 
and a half of men, perhaps a few more or less, 
but very nearly that number. During the two 
years and two months of the War already pass- 
ed, an average of about 800,000 men must have 
been in the field. The Rebels, by their sweeping 
conscriptions, without regard to past precedent 
or future prospects of keeping their number 
good, have kept up a force two-thirds as large 
as the Union force, and for a part of the time 
exceeding that proportion. Modern implements 
of w^ar have been destructive to life and limb 
beyond a parallel. The fighting has been fre- 
quent and severe, though often undecisive. The 
larger number of our men has of course ex- 
posed us to a heavier loss than the Rebels. A 
lack of acclimation in the Southern fields which 

24* 



282 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

they have occupied has acted against the health 
and lives of our men. The improved and per- 
fected sanitary regulations and appliances of the 
Union armv have been of immense effect in 
saving our men. The necessary or needless 
lack of these, on the Rebel side, has brought the 
actual loss to the two about equal. Perhaps 
our assaulting of their Mississippi fortifications 
is turning the balance in their favor. The li- 
censed slaughter of all Union men within the 
reach of Rebel marauders adds an item to the 
whole. From a quarter to half a million of the 
most valuable lives, men in their early prime, 
have doubtless already been destroyed in the 
progress of this War. Multiply by this the dis- 
tress and sorrow of a circle of loving hearts that 
ached and bled for each. If figures, or words 
can be found, adequate to express the footing of 
these three items of this bill of the sacrifices, 
then can we approximate the cost at which the 
perjured leaders of this inhuman treason pro- 
posed to purchase their exemption from all in- 
cumbering contact with the mildest and most 
humane ' and liberal form of civil society ever 
realized. 

What light does this computation of their 
deliberate, intelligently preconcerted sacrifices 
throw on the nature of their aim. The two of 



DEVASTATION THE CONTTN'GENT AIM. 283 

necessity are consonant and accordant. What 
is the aim that accords with such means of at- 
taining it? What is the proposed diversity from 
their former civil state that justifies the outlay 
of this unutterable cost in arriving: at it ? The 
picture before us exhibits the infuriate spirit of 
all relict barbarity, committing wholesale demo- 
lition on the producers, and the products, of 
modern civilization. It is the demon of ancient 
Despotism, long driven from his throne, return- 
ing, " with seven other spirits more wicked than 
himself," to reduce the outgrowth of all modern 
principles to that condition of narrowness and 
poverty that suits a restoration of his reign. 
The annihilating destruction of property, and 
of national character, strength, and resources, 
and the fiend-gloating oblation of life and love 
and hope, are not so much the dreaded but ne- 
cessary means of attaining a precious end that 
compensates the cost, as they are themselves the 
end, subordinate in ultimate importance, only, to 
the restoration of a despotism designed and 
fitted to perpetuate the desolation its advent 
has induced. 

The bill of inexpressible costs, deliberately 
incurred b}^ those who laid and launched the 
plot for the destruction of the United States 
government, proves that the present war is no 



284 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

accident, the dictate of no mere caprice. Men 
do not consign their own country, their own sec- 
tion, and their own homes, to devastation, and 
their own friends and neighbors and sons to 
wholesale immolation, from mere caprice, un- 
less their African associations have reduced 
them to the level of Dahomians. The present 
War is taking place under the action of the 
deepest principles and the most abiding laws 
that govern man's individual or associate action. 
In case of Southern success, and the achieving 
of Southern independence, the same law that 
induced the present War and the transpiring sac- 
rifice would prompt a continual repetition of 
the war and sacrifice, till the last remnant of 
the hated democratic government shall have 
been eradicated from the continent. In case of 
Rebel fliiiure, under the action of the same abid- 
ing law of inimical antipathy to all democratic 
rule, as little almost as possible, besides bones 
and ashes, is designed to be left, to grace the 
triumph, or requite the outlay, of the friends of 
civil freedom. 

It is not more the cause of this country and 
of this generation than it is the cause of all 
nations and of all time, that is now being fought 
out on American soil, between the friends and 
the enemies of civil freedom j therefore this 



FATAL FASCINATIONS. 285 

ignoring of all human ties, on the part of the 
latter, this insatiate greed to ruin all that they 
cannot permanently rule. 

We are told that some serpents have the abil- 
ity to fascinate their prey. Few facts in natu- 
ral life fail to exemplify some active principle in 
the moral and social world. So we see this spir- 
it of fiendish destructiveness, this unmitigated 
antagonist, not only of democratic equality of 
rights, but of all human happiness and prosper- 
ity, fascinates into an insane fondness for itself, 
first, and most naturally, the female portion of 
its master-class; second, and most fatally, the 
poor white portion of its own Southern com- 
munity, whom it has kept in permanent depri- 
vation of everything but naked existence on the 
cheapest rations ; third, last, and least excus- 
ably, those political partisans at the North, 
drunk from the orgies of former political tri- 
umph and partisan excesses, beyond the possi- 
bility of ever conceiving a purer desire, or a 
nobler design, than to achieve the overthrow 
of those whom they elect to treat as political 
enemies, though patriotism and peace, prosper- 
ity, national existence, and the star of hope, go 
down in bloody chaos and eternal night at their 
discomfiture. 

It is the necessary infirmity of all democ- 



286 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

racy, that the most ignorant and incompetent, 
the constitutionally selfish, incapacitated, ma- 
lign, and perversely active, as well as the able, 
devoted, and patriotic, must have an equal 
chance of acting on the destinies of the civil 
State. But that the former classes should com- 
bine, with no other creed, doctrine, or political 
principle than that of dividing the incomes and 
patronage of civil employment among them- 
selves, and to this end the electing at every cost 
of the candidate of their own nominating, — this 
is a misfortune, so far as history shows, pecul- 
iar to the American Republic. 

That, after thirty years of success and consol- 
idation, this ruling combination, under the blind 
and fatuitous assumption that they are thereby 
to perpetuate their power, should sell them- 
selves, and their hitherto ruling influence, to a 
clique of tbe boldest despots, professing to aim 
at nothing but the enslavement of subordin- 
ates, and exultingly gloating at the repast, ^s 
they clutch the vitals and drink the life-blood 
of the nation, — this results from criminal delin- 
quency on the part of better men than them- 
selves, — a delinquency which they, who are 
guilty of it, and their unoffending sons and 
daughters are now atoning for in tears and 
treasure; and are washing out with blood. 



CAUSES OF SECESSION. 287 

Good and evil originate and abide together in 
every human community. But that, among the 
rich privileges which republican government 
confers upon its possessors is the privilege of 
perpetually postponing with impunity all polit- 
ical strife between the evil and the good, is a 
fundamental error, and leads to the accumula- 
tion of the arrearages of that unpleasant and 
neglected duty, into an avalanche like that 
which is pouring on the virtuous portion of the 
nation at such an hour as this. 

It is not transcending the legitimate bounda- 
ries of political, historic inquest to note that no 
small encouragement has been given to the 
present onslaught on the government and life 
of the nation, by those infidel diddlers who 
have so industriously inoculated the Northern 
mind with non-resistant and no-punishment sen- 
timents that it was matter of military calcula- 
tion that a certain portion of the Northern peo- 
ple would "lie supinely" still, while despots 
"bound them hand and foot," and cut the 
throats of such as they did not see fit to con- 
sio-n to active servitude. 

The permitted self-appropriation of the terms 
"Democracy," and "Democratic" by the pro- 
slavery, pro-southern politicians of the North, 
has exerted an immense influence with the un- 



288 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

informed and the unreflecting at home and 
abroad, in bringing the country to its present 
imperilled and distressed condition. And every 
man professing Union sentiments, who by his 
practice still sanctions that appropriation of 
those terms, to that extent becomes accessory 
to the traitor's crime. 

The artful orators and editors of the South 
have, from the first, used only that form of 
speech which ignores entirely the possible dis- 
solving of the joints and bands by which their 
subordinates are incorporated into one living, 
acting organism, under its despotic head. North- 
ern partisans of the despots, of course, adopt the 
same rule of utterance, and the Union people, 
and the government itself, have been too ready 
to allow this form of expression respecting the 
Southern people. Those despot leaders speak 
of "subjugation or success as their only alter- 
native," and say that "annihilation and subju- 
gation mean the same thing." Their views 
in this regard are doubtless correct, so far as 
themselves individually and their own domi- 
nating class are concerned. And their anni- 
hilation is probably the first indispensable step 
toward a restoration of peace. But that the 
seven and three-fourths millions of Southern 
w^hite population, who occupy the place, and 



DEMOCRACY AT THE SOUTH. 289 

participate in the spirit, only of the subject 
masses of a grinding despotism would con- 
sign themselves to annihilation rather than 
become reformed into a community of equal 
rights, — a sincere democracy, — is an unde- 
monstrated proposition which no one believes 
to be true, not even those who never speak 
as if its falsity were possible. The absence, 
root and branch, of the whole system of ne- 
gro slavery, and the annihilation of the des- 
potic master-class from among them, will work 
wonders in preparing the way for vast, radi- 
cal, rapid, and enduring changes in the polit- 
ical faith and practice of the masses of white 
population at the South. 

25 



XLVII. 

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS THE DEMOCRAT AND DESPOT DI- 
VERSE GRADES OF DESPOTISM DEVELOPMENTS OF 

DEMOCRACY SPONTANEOUS IN ITS SPREAD — IF IT DEVEL- 
OPS IN THE SOUTH, ITS TRIUMPH UNIVERSAL. — CONTRAST 
OF ADMINISTRATIONS — DELINQUENCY OF THE OLD WHIG 
STATESMEN — FINAL SUCCESS. 

We now glance back, prepared to estimate 
more perfectly than at any previous point the 
true value of what will have been found to be a 
leading doctrine in what this book contains; 
namely, that the despot and the democrat are 
two distinct kinds of being in the civil world, as 
irreconcilably and unconvertibly different as it 
is possible to make those who possessed origi- 
nally the same natural physical and mental con- 
stitution. In other words, as stated at first, the 
change from despotism to democracy, or the 
reverse, is the greatest secular change to which 
the human constitution is liable, whether the 
individual or the community be the subject on 
which the change is considered to have passed. 
So that the democrat and the despot, the friend 
and advocate of democracy on the one hand, 
and the friend and advocate of despotism on 
the other hand, are as inconvertibly different, as 

290 



GLASS DIVERSITIES. 291 

irreconcilably antagonistic to each other, in the 
civil world, as it is possible for two individuals 
to become, each of whom started with the same 
conformation of body and of mind. 

We use the qualifying term secular, in speak- 
ing of this difference, this change, in order to 
distinguish it from the change of character 
which separates between the individual who 
does, and the individual who does not, volunta- 
rily submit himself to the moral government of 
God. 

We would here, without discussing its merits, 
suggest the inquiry, whether there is not, in this 
age and section of the world, a marked dispar- 
ity between the friends of democracy and the 
friends of despotism, in respect to the propor- 
tion which each class contains of those who be- 
lieve in, and aim sincerely to obey, the revealed 
Scriptures. 

We would still bear in mind that the despotic 
class are of two grades, — the governing and the 
governed; the ambitious and selfish and po- 
tent few, and the foiled and defeated and cir- 
cumvented, but still undemocratic, many. 

We would here reflect on what needs no ex- 
tended discussion, such is its obviousness, — that 



2d§ NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

any considerable aspiration after office, power, 
or perhaps after permanently accumulated 
wealtV' is essentially a despotic exercise, radi- 
cally inimical to democracy, inimical to that 
consenting equality of privilege which is the 
soul and essence of democracy — and consti- 
tutes the nascent struggle by which the radical- 
ly despotic member of the abject grade in a des- 
potism breaks the shell of his chrysalis, to come 
forth a full-fledged, breeding specimen of the 
ruling class, as inconvertibly fixed in despotic 
principles as devils are in sin. 

Here, evidently, is one of the greatest perils 
of a maturely democratic State, namely, in the 
natural ambition of the individual to possess 
himself of a fragment from the crumbling pre- 
rogative of despotic power, especially as the 
vigilant, restless, persevering, and persistent en- 
terprise which this ambition produces, stands 
out in uncompensated contrast, and destructive 
antagonism, against the modest, unambitious 
self-restraint which characterizes, and constitutes 
the leading element in, true democracy. 

Thus in the ordinary routine of electing civil 
officers in a democratic State, the most despoti- 
cally inclined come to the surface naturally, and 

* That " cursed love of gold," which the Father of our County foresaw, 
would be a chief source of peril to the permanency of our government. 



OFFICE-SEEKERS DESPOTIC. 293 

those employed in the activity peculiar to the 
nascent despot are almost the only ones that 
stand any chance of being elected. Thus the 
indiscriminated and the indiscriminating attach- 
ment to principles of popular freedom and dem- 
ocratic equality, on the one hand, becomes pitted 
against the restless energy of the individual 
despot, on the other hand ; ancl hence arises an 
element of strife, if not the leading element of 
strife, in the greater number of our popular 
elections, unless it be when two candidates who 
are both more aspiring than democratic get to 
contendins: with each other over the coveted 
preferment. And every succeeding success of 
candidates thus procuring themselves to be elect- 
ed leaves their kind and class encouraged and 
strengthened, and leaves the indiscriminating 
lovers of popular liberty, over w^hom they tri- 
umph, more cowed and abject. Thus the demo- 
cratic community, under the modern self electing 
agency of office-seekers, yearly approximates 
more and more nearly to the constitution of a 
despotic state of society, which is characterized 
by a division into the ruling few and the abject 
many. 

I find myself sometimes instinctively calling 
for some coercive force wherewith to extend the 

25* 



294 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

principles of democratic freedom. But such an 
idea is absurd. It is but a lingering remnant 
of despotic life enlisting itself in favor of a 
changed and, to it, an unnatural aim. Democratic 
principles, the love and practice of popular free- 
dom, are of their own essential nature, necessarily 
self-propagating, purely spontaneous in their 
spread. To curb* and curtail the usurping pow- 
er of despots, to afford to popular masses time 
and space and facilities for self education and 
elevation, and to set before them present ex- 
amples of an imperative demand for, and a self- 
restrained contentment with, democratic equality 
of civil position and privilege, appears to be all 
that can be done for propagating principles of 
democracy beyond the sphere in which an indi- 
vidual or a people is alone responsible.* 

This kind of protection and encouragement 
may be given to the subordinate classes in the 
Seceded States, in the absence of slavery, and 
if a rising spirit of democracy and self-improve- 
ment appears and develops itself, as, aided by 
something of immigration, doubtless will be the 
case, then this continent is secure and sacred 
to democracy. Otherwise, and especially if sla- 



* All the democratic principles or practices propagated by dictation, are 
only such as are received by the abject class in a despotic state of society 
over which that dictating power presides. 



TREASON IN LEGISLATION. 295 

very is permanently replanted, the seeds and 
source of civil despotism remain, consuming 
conflict is inevitable, and the pining anguish of 
intestine strife, or fratricidal war, is perpetuated 
and must prevail, till the sickened nationality 
rots away. For if these seeds and this source 
of despotism survive their present low and im- 
perilled predicament, there is little hope that 
they will ever become extinct ; and as for the 
spirit of freedom which is inimical to all despot- 
ism, there is no reason to believe that it will die 
out from this its Heaven-prepared birth-place 
and home, until it shall have died out elsewhere 
from off Jehovah's footstool. 



As the war progresses, and, more especially 
since the military power of the " Confederacy " 
begins to show exhaustion, and Southern Union- 
ists begin to speak out, and tell what they 
know, as R. S. Donnell, of the " Raleigh State 
Journal," has recently [August 20th, 1863] done, 
it becomes undeniable as a matter of history, 
that the plan to divide the Union was formed 
by leading Southerners many years ago, and 
that many measures of government and legisla- 
tion, like the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise^ the framing of the Fugitive Slave Law, — 



296 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

even back to the building of the forts that guard 
the Southern ports, — and especially leading 
measures adopted by the ruling political party, 
and the final rupture of that party at its con- 
vention at Charleston, were steps taken with di- 
rect reference to the intended separation, and 
with the design to make that separation easy 
and certain.-^ As matter of history, independent 
of any argument this work elsewhere contains, 
I now desire to refer to this admitted fact, and 
to make it the basis of the following argument. 
To form a plan of operations so momentous 
and so vast, to impress the disposition and pur- 
pose of its execution on an extensive and ruling 
class of men, in many and diverse States, to 
transmit the plan and purpose from generation 
to generation, as these Southern leaders have 
done ; to interlock their damnable treason in 
disguise with the most important acts of the 
government and of the people of the nation 
through a course of tens of years, to say noth- 
ing of the herculean strength and almost su- 
perhuman activity which these leaders have 
developed and displayed since the War began, 
— and this, too, with only the passive support of 
popular masses whose every real interest was in 
point blank hostility to the course their leaders 

* See Mason's letter to Davis, — Appendix C 



TALENTS PECULIAR TO DESPOTS AND VILLAINS. 297 

induced them to pursue, — demonstrates these 
Southern leaders of the RebelHon to possess exec- 
utive talents and governing abilities which never 
have been, or can be, either produced or perpet- 
uated in individual democrats, or in a democratic 
community. 

The confiding quiet of a democratic state of 
society, while it affords the amplest scope for 
self-elevation by the arts of peace and useful 
industry, affords neither cause nor opportunity for 
developing talents parallel to those which the 
Southern leaders have displayed.* 

The absence of these talents, and the absence 
of the aims and avocations which constitute their 
peculiar exercise, — the absence of a fiery ambi- 
tion that would consume every endeared thing 
but its naked self, would immolate its country- 
men, and leave its native land a blackened waste, 
in the pursuit of despotic power, — this is the 
great deficiency in '' Yankee " constitution and 
character, which renders the democratic popu- 
lation of the North so insufferably offensive in 
modern times to the nostrils of Southern men. 
But thanks be to God, there are more than seven 

* The nearest approach that is made to this will probably be in the case of 
some stray villain who makes it his business to prey upon the possessions 
and rights of others, and defy the law. In this line of action, extraordinary 
abilities are sometimes developed; after the manner of the Kansas Quantrell, 
and the guerrilla, John Morgan. 



298 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 

and a half millions of Southern men who are in- 
capable of appreciating, or even perceiving, this 
ofFensiveness, — men to whom a taste of demo- 
cratic equality of rights and privileges, and an 
introduction to the arts of peace and industry 
as they have become developed in the truly 
democratic North, in the absence of slaves and 
their despot masters, and of fear of servile in- 
surrection, will be as life from the dead/'= 

If the present War succeeds in emancipating 
these millions of Southern whites from the grind- 
ing despotism under which they have been 
crushed from generation to generation, till they 
had become so conformed to their impoverished 
and depressed condition as to be hopelessly un- 
conscious of their wrongs, it will have added 
another brilliant wreath to the diadem of Lib- 
erty, — will have given that turn to the tide of 
victory which must render her dominion on 
this continent perpetual and supreme. 

The exhaustless resources and massive pop- 
ular strength which gather spontaneously to 
democracy must be relied on, in the yet un- 
ended conflict between the two, to counterpoise 

* Tyrants hate democrats, their subjects never, except so far as they have 
been trained like apes to imitate the very sentiments and sensations of their 
keepers. 



299 

the talent for command peculiar to the cham- 
pions of despotism. 

A moiety of the peculiar ability that, in the 
space of a few weeks, successfully commanded 
the millions of Southern whites, who supposed 
themselves to be democratic members of a dem- 
ocratic community, into the subordinate ranks 
of a consolidated despotism of the most bloody 
and inhuman kind, had that moiety been pos- 
sessed on the other side, would have frustrated 
the current treason in somewhat the style in 
which its prelude, nullification, was brought to 
nought. 

The issue, in the existing War, is between 
Despotism and its supporters on the one hand, 
and Democracy and its adherents on the other 
hand. These two belligerents have each the 
seat of its power and the body of its forces, 
mainly, but not entirely, the former at the 
South, the latter at the North. Each belligerent 
has some friends on the territory controlled by 
its antagonist ; and the one that, by the aid of 
its absent friends, succeeds in raising an impor- 
tant diversion (producing a permanent revolt) 
on the soil and among the adherents of its an- 
tao-onist, must be the final winner. The same 
was true before the strife at arms commenced, 
is true while that strife lasts, and will continue 
to be true when that strife is over. 



300 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

Each belligerent has its forces mainly on the 
section of this country which it controls, but 
Europe, Africa, and Asia, heaven, earth, and hell, 
are all interested and taking active part in the 
conflict. Every month the contest approaches, 
and the combatants divide, more and more obvi- 
ously near upon the line that separates between 
righteousness and iniquity. 

The successful artifice by which John Morgan, 
after such a course as he had run, succeeded in 
surrendering himself, unhurt, a prisoner of war 
in the interior of Ohio, the inhuman plan, and 
still more inhuman execution of that plan, by 
which Davis rids his dominions of those who are 
unfriendly to him, putting them in the van of 
the hottest fights, and hanging as traitors all 
who object to being thus disposed of, the style 
in which Generals Baker, Lander, McCook, and 
others of whom Davis was afraid, have been put 
out of the way, the African style in which 
Lawrence, Kansas, was treated, '^ — these in con- 
trast with the guilelessness that is ever permit- 
ting the success of such artifices as that of 
Morgan and the rest, together with the self- 
restraint that leaves Davis's dominions so long 
and so extensively uninterfered with, give the 

*■ The Richmond Examiner jnst'ifies the Lawrence massacre as a " gallant 
and perfectly fan* blow at the enemy." — Boston paper. 



CONTRAST OF ADMINISTRATIONS. 301 

characteristic lineaments of the two belli<rer- 

o 

ents.* 

The idea of destroying Davis's government in 
the estimation and confidence of the Southern 
people appears never to have entered into Presi- 
dent Lincoln's plan of operation. Perhaps it 
would have availed nothing if it had. Even if 
it had entered into that plan, and had been 
availing, the despotic organism over which 
Davis presides, like polyps of certain species, 
when beheaded, would spontaneously supply its 
deficiency, and live on. But the idea of destroy- 
ing the present administration in the esteem 
and confidence of the Northern people, and the 
(to them at least) apparent feasibility of the 
project, have doubtless presented a prominent 
object of aspiration and effort, and a prominent 
source of hope and encouragement to the Rebel 
leaders. 

According to the light we now possess, had 
the present administration shown itself to any 
considerable extent more feeble and hesitating 
than it did, the loyal masses of its supporters 
would have become so doubting and disheart- 
ened, and the Northern friends of treason would 
have become so bold and active, that Secession 
would have had an early triumph ; or the War 

* See Appendix D. 
26 



302 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

would have been protracted to a point at which 
reunion would not have appeared worth con- 
tending for. 

On the other hand, had the present adminis- 
tration, at an early period of the struggle, rung 
out a clear analysis of the situation, and a 
decided policy, after the manner of Gen. Rose- 
crans' letter to the Ohio legislature; had it 
adopted and pursued a military course, obvi- 
ously, inexorably, with ever-deepening stress, 
and by the use of all availing means, bent on 
the achieving of its proper aims, instead of coun- 
termanding the orders of Fremont, Hunter, and 
Burnside, and catering to the semi-secessionists 
of the Border States till the exhaustion and 
havoc of eighteen months of war, apparently 
spent in demonstrating the mildness of the 
government, had quenched the fervor of united 
patriotism which was kindled by the first attack 
on Fort Sumter, — thus leaving the stagnant 
and discouraged feelings and opinions of the 
people to be tampered with by such demagogues 
as C. L. Yallandigham, D. W. Voorhees, Fer- 
nando Wood and the Toucey Seymours, — might 
not this administration have so led the Northern 
people, instead of waiting to be led by them, 
as to have diminished the blood-and-treasure ex- 
penses of the War by one or two years' expen- 



DELINQUENCY OF STATESMEN. 303 

ditures? This is a question for later days to 
answer. And the right and final answer, it may 
be, will not be given before another century 
has shed its light on the points in which a vir- 
tuous monarch and an equally virtuous chief 
magistrate of a democratic people agree to differ. 

Something of the same light, perhaps, also, 
should be allowed to flill on the inquiry, whether 
the statesmen of the old Whig school, in their 
unrelaxed and undying antagonism to the pro- 
gressive corruption and traitorous depravity of 
their opponents, instead of allowing themselves 
to be finally discomfited and laying themselves 
down in quiet graves, either beneath or above 
the sod, should not, one and all, have left their 
homes at Bladensburg, if need required it, sooner 
than have left the envenomed progeny of Cal- 
houn and his poHtical party thus to immerse 
the nation in its self-shed blood, and thus to 
precipitate a peril to the cause of Liberty more 
to be dreaded than the sacrifice by which the 
threatening disaster is being turned away. 

But the delinquency of these statesmen, and 
the resulting sacrifice and peril, are putting a 
purer and more grateful song in the Hps of those 
who, with something of the faith of ancient Mi- 
riam, are disposed to praise their people's Great 
Deliverer. 



304 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 

When this dreadful War shall have ended, — 
when this conspiracy of home-born traitors shall 
have been effectually put down, and this con- 
federation of foreign despots, potentates, and 
powers, shall have been defeated, — then will 
there go up one general shout of joy, — joy 
more heartfelt, more wide-extended and endur- 
ing, than human hearts ever before experienced, 
or human tongues ever uttered before. " Ethi- 
opia shall stretch out her hands unto God," and 
the emancipated millions of our Southern white 
population will soon send back the sound. 



APPENDIX. 



A. (Page 267.) 
The following extract from a letter addressed, March 25th, 
1862, to a Senator who had moved in the Senate of the United 
States the compensated emancipation of slaves in the Distiict 
of Columbia, presents one feature of the process of emancipa- 
tion : — 

Sir : — A proposition to emancipate the slaves of the unse- 
ceded States, with a compensation to masters, being prominently 
before Congress, having had extended acquaintance among 
Southern men, and some experience in the management of 
slaves, and having been for the six years last past a voter in 
your State, I ask feave to lay before you briefly a few reflec- 
tions on this subject. 

I beheve it to be admitted as true, among those whose experi- 
ence best entitles them to know, that slave-labor is unprofitable, 
except where employed in the producing of some one great 
staple commodity readily marketable for cash. 

Since the introduction of tobacco-culture into the new States 
of the West, slave-holding in the northernmost of the Slave 
States has been decidedly unprofitable; and must have been 
abandoned, had it not been for the profit derived by selling oflf 
the increase of the slave population to the Cotton States. 

Now, the present War either will, or will not, destroy the 
slave-market in the far South. If that market is destroyed, slave 
property in the other States thereupon becomes, with few and 
seeming exceptions, utterly and notoriously worthless ; and any 
proposal to pay masters out of the United States treasury for 
26* 805 



306 APPENDIX. 

relinquishing their claim on it, is little else than fraudulent. If, 
on the other hand, slavery in the Cotton States is not destroyed, 
then slaves in the Border States have still a pecuniary value ; 
and by proposing to compensate masters for releasing them, gov- 
ernment simply enters the market as a competitor, to keep up 
the price. ........ 

All that is vital to our national existence and prosperity, is 
involved in the prompt and utter extinction of slavery in the 
cotton latitudes. 

B. (Page 252.) 

The following article on political nomenclature, was published 
in the " Portland Press," of July, 1863 : — 

A more damning falsehood never was palmed off on a pack of 
fools, than that the pro-southern, pro-slavery politicians of the North 
are not the radical and necessary enemies of all democracy. 

No two things in nature are more irreconcilable, invariably 
and eternally antagonistic, than despotism and democracy. One 
or the other must perish, wherever they come in contact. 

Slavery is the darkest, densest form of despotism. 

The Southern Confederacy, founded on slavery, begotten of 
slavery, living for, aiming at, tending toward, and ending in, 
nothing else but slavery, already presents the world, in this third 
year of its nascent existence, with the fiercest and most unmit- 
igated form of despotism that there is this side of Dahomey. 
Its European abettors, with Louis Napoleon at the head and the 
" London Times," at the tail, are the dregs of Europe's effete des- 
potic class. But these Northern sympathizers with, and aiders 
of, the precious combination, forsooth we are told are "Demo- 
crats " ! 

Now the mere sound of the words democrat and democratic 
sways the opinion of large masses of European minds, controls 
the political faith and action of the principal portion of our im- 



APPENDIX. 307 



migrants and of immense multitudes of our home-born voters ; 
and as long as Union men, democratic supporters of a demo- 
cratic government, allow and aid the bald and brazen advocates 
of everything that pertains to despotism to adorn themselves 
and delude their dupes with the purloined and self-appropriated 
title, " Democrats," so long will conclusive reasoning on political 
subjects before the public mind be impracticable ; out of the re- 
sulting fog and confusion, designing demagogues will have an 
easy task to make the worst appear the better argument ; if our 
armies are victorious in the field, wavering multitudes will join 
the side of victory, without any apprehension of the nature or 
importance of the principles that win ; and while the war contin- 
ues, hundreds of thousands of honest and rightrminded men like 
Butler and Corcoran will have to fight and toil and suffer for 
years, before they will begin to see that Jeflf. Davis and his 
comrades are not entirely innocent, wliile they call themselves 
" Democrats" and Abraham Lincoln a "despot," — and all this 
because our political writers and speakers and thinkers lack the 
grace and courage to call things by their right names. 

Abraham Lincoln is a democrat. His administration is a 
democratic administration. The only opposite of democratic is 
despotic. Jefferson Davis is a despot. His administration is 
a despotism. The men who support and favor it are in favor of 
despotism. When they shall have done with the United States, 
if they do not get used up before that time, the United States 
will be a despotism, and all — as many as dwell within its boun- 
daries — who are not in favor of despotic government will be 
compelled to keep their mouths shut, or do worse. T. S. G. 



C. (Page 259.) 

The following is a letter from Frank Pierce to Jeff. Davis, 
which was originally published in Concord about a week ago. 



308 APPENDIX. 

As its authenticity has not been disputed, we may safely con- 
clude that it is genuine. 



Clarendon Hotel, January 6, 1860. 

My Dear Friend : — I wrote you an unsatisfactory note a 
day or two since. I have just had a pleasant interview with Mr. 
Shepley, whose courage and fidelity are equal to his learning 
and talents. He says he would rather fight the battle with you 
as the standard bearer in 1860 than under the auspices of any 
other leader. The feeling and judgment of Mr. S, in this rela- 
tion is, I am confident, rapidly gaining ground in New England. 
Our people are looking for the " Coming Man," one who is 
raised by all the elements of his character above the atmosphere 
ordinarily breathed by politicians, — a man really fitted for this 
emergency by his ability, courage, broad statesmanship and 
patriotism. 

Colonel Seymour (Thomas H.) arrived here this morning and 
expressed his views in this relation in almost the identical lan- 
guage used by Mr. Shepley. It is true that in the present state 
of things at Washington and throughout the country, no man 
can predict what changes two or three months may bring forth. 
Let me suggest that in the morning debates of Congress, full 
justice seems to me not to have been done to the Democracy 
of the North. I do not believe that our friends at the South 
have any just idea of the state of feeling hurrying at this mo 
ment to the pitch of intense exasperation between those who re- 
spect their political obligations, and those who have apparently 
no impelling power but that which fanatical passion on the sub- 
ject of domestic slavery imparts. 

Without discussing the question of right, — of abstract power 
to secede — I have never believed that actual disruption of the 
Union can occur without blood ; and if, through the madness of 
Northern Abolitionists, that dii-e calamity must come, the fight- 



APPENDIX. 309 

ing wiU not he along Mason and Dixon'' s line merely. It 

WILL BE WITHIN OUR OWN BORDERS, IN OUR OWN STREETS, 
BETWEEN THE TWO CLASSES OF CITIZENS TO WHOM I HAVE RE- 
FERRED. TJiose who defy law and scout constitutional obligor 
tions will, if we ever reach the arbitrament of arms, find oc- 
cupation ENOUGH AT HOME. Nothing but the state of Mrs. 
Pierce's health would induce me to leave the country now, al- 
though it is quite likely that my presence at home would be of 
little service. I have tried to impress upon our people, espe- 
cially in New Hampshire and Connecticut, where the only elec- 
tions are to take place the coming spring, that while our Union 
meetings are all in the right direction and well enough for the 
present, they will not be worth the paper upon which their reso- 
lutions are written, unless we can overthrow political abolitionism 
at the polls, and repeal the unconstitutional and obnoxious laws 
wliich, in the cause of " Personal Liberty," have been placed 
on our statute books. I shall look with deep interest and not 
without hope for a decided change in this relation. 

Ever and truly your friend, 

FRANKLIN PIERCE. 
Hon. Jeff. Davis, Washington, D. C. 

It was such assurances as those given in the above letter that 
emboldened the Rebel leaders to war upon the government, and 
there is a singular harmony between the assertions of Pierce 
with regard to the course of events at the North and the views 
of tbe Rebel newspapers at the South before the bombardment 
of Fort Sumter. It will be recollected that they, too, predicted 
civil war and bread riots at the North, showing that the assuran- 
ces of Northern traitors had been credulously swallowed. — Bos- 
ton Journal : Supplement, September 25, 1863. 

The following from the " Boston Journal " of October 19th and 
20th, 1863, presents a ghmpse of the true attitude and charac- 
ter long possessed and maintained by this *' Dear Friend" 



310 APPENDIX. 

to wliom Mr. Pierce was tlien and appears yet to be so *' ever 
and traly" attached. 

More op Jeff. Davis's Intercepted Correspondence. — The 
following is a copy of a letter from Mason to JefF. Davis, and 
was found among the intercepted correspondence of the latter. 

Selma, near Winchester, Va., ) 
September 30, 1856. j 

My Dear Sir: — I have a letter from Wise, of the 27th, 
full of spirit. He says the governments of North and South 
Carolinas and Louisiana have already agreed to the rendezvous 
at Raleigh, and others will. (This in your most private ear.) 
He says fui'ther that he had officially requested you to exchange 
with Vu-ginia on fair terms of differences, percussion for flint 
muskets. Don't know the usage or power of department in 
such cases, but if it can be done soon by liberal constructions I 
hope you will accede. Was there not at the last session an appro- 
priation for converting flint into percussion arms ? If so, would 
it not furnish good reason for extending such facilities to the 
States ? Virginia probably has more arms than the other South- 
ern States, and would divide in case of need. In a letter yes- 
terday to a committee in South Carohna, I gave it as my judg- 
ment, in the event of Fremont's election, the South should not 
pause, but proceed at once to immediate, absolute, and eternal 
separation. So I am a candidate for the first halter. Wise says 
his accounts from Philadelphia are cheering for old Buck in 
Pennsylvania. I hope they be not delusive. Vale et salude. 

Mason's Letter. — This letter is one of the most valuable 
yet drawn from the treasure-house of the captured Jeff. Davis 
correspondence. It incontestably establishes, what has been ex- 
tensively impressed upon the public mind, that the Southern 
leaders were prepared to ante-date the Rebellion four years, in 
case Fremont had been elected. They were resolved in 1856 to 
break up the Union the moment they could not hold its chief 



APPENDIX. 311 

offices. The John Brown movement and other pretexts are thus 
proved to be utterly devoid of any foundation. The letter also 
shows that Floyd's thieving exploit with the public arms was not 
original with him, but had been hit upon four years earlier by 
Henry A. Wise, and commended by Mason to Jeff. Davis, 
Thus started and patronized, it was not likely to be forgotten 
whenever the time should come for putting it into execution. 



D. (Page 301.) 

The " New York Express " says there is not one word of truth 
in the statement about confessions, etc., and gives the following 
account of this victim to Rebel vengeance : — 

Mr. Spencer Kellogg Brown, whose case is here mentioned, 
was the son of 0. C. Brown of Jefferson county. New York, 
He enlisted in the army under General Lyon in 1861, and re- 
mained in active service until he was taken prisoner off Port 
Hudson, August 14th, 1862. He had been in the service of 
the government under Admiral Foote, and was on board the 
gunboat Essex, Commodore Porter, when that vessel committed 
such a havoc upon the Rebel ram, the Arkansas. He was cap- 
tured as a prisoner of was, while destroying a Rebel ferry-boat 
near Port Hudson, August 14th, and while under protection of 
a boat's crew of forty m-cn, through whose cowardice, it is al- 
leged, he was taken and made prisoner. There was an unnatu- 
ral hatred felt toward all on board the Essex, and young Kel- 
logg Brown was treated with such great indignity that Commo- 
dore Porter held five Rebel officers as hostages for his good treat- 
ment and release. On the solemn assurances of Ex-Governor 
Wickliffe of Louisiana that Brown should be treated as a pris- 
oner of war, these five men were set free and have been ex- 
changed, while a gallant officer is hung on the unfounded charge 
of being a spy. For over a year he has been kept as a close 



312 APPENDIX. 

prisoner at Castle Thunder, in Richmond, and to-day his father, 
now in this city on business, hears through the Richmond pa- 
pers, that his son was executed on Friday last. 

What adds to this outrage and calamity, is the assurance of 
General Halleck, given as late as Monday last to the father of 
the murdered man, that his son should be protected, as there was 
no ground for his execution, and it was therefore impossible. 
Notice was given at once by a flag of truce that retaliation 
would follow such an act of brutahty ; but the assurance came 
too late, as the officer was executed on Friday last, three days 
before the interview. 



E. 

The following extracts of news, current while this volume is in 
press, verify the old proverb, " It is hard to teach old dogs new 
tricks;" also that other proverb of sacred origin, "Can the 
Ethiopian change his skin? etc." 

A special despatch to the " Chicago Tribune," dated at Indi- 
anapolis, Indiana, October 9th, says, — 

*' The Provost Marshal at Richmond, Indiana, arrested nine- 
teen persons this morning, all armed with revolvers, en route 
for Dayton, to vote for Vallandigham. After their arrest, two 
of the party confessed the facts and stated that many more were 
expected to follow. They came to Richmond by different routes, 
and each had in his possesssion a rough map showing the differ- 
ent railroads leading through Indiana, to Dayton, Ohio. The 
leader of the party first gave his name as John Brown, but af- 
terward said it was Webster Cassel, and that they all hailed 
from Cliicago, Illinois." 

The " Cincinnati Gazette " has a special despatch from Chicago 
which says, — 

" The friends of Brough must be on the lookout for imported 



APPENDIX. 313 

TOtes. It is believed that a wide-spread scheme to colonize thou- 
sands of Copperheads from this State into Ohio is being carried 
out. The unlawful and nefarious work is being done under the 
auspices and management of the K. Gr. C.'s. The Copperhead 
organs of Chicago and Springfield advise Democrats to visit 
Ohio to see that Vallandigham has fair play. The nature of the 
visit and sort of fair play meant, your readers can guess. Many 
of those colonists from hereabout will strike for Cincinnati, 
where they expect to hide from sight and swear in their votes. 
The penalties for perjury or fear of detection will not restrain 
them from attemping to vote. Each is a repeater, and will vote 
early and often, but every town under Copperhead control will 
receive its share." 

.The " Philadelphia Bulletin," in commenting upon the result 
of the election, says, — 

*' The canvass for governor in Pennsylvania was one of the 
most spirited ever known. The Copperhead managers resorted 
to every trick, every deception, and every falsehood to carry the 
State for Woodward. Ho himself abandoned his former ex- 
pressed opinions in order that he might obtain votes, and on the 
day before the election, Gen. ^IcClellan, in a weak moment, was 
persuaded to abandon his very proper reserve and write a letter 
in favor of Woodward, which, it was hoped, would influence many 
votes. Colonizing was attempted on a stupendous scale, and 
even soldiers of the Rebel army were brought into Pennsylvania, 
placed on the assessors' rolls, and their taxes paid by Demo- 
cratic politicians, in order to make a majority against Curtin. 
These, and all their other desperate expedients, have failed miser- 
ably. Andrew Gr. Curtin has been reelected, and wo beheve 
that the legislature of the State will show a handsome Union 
majority. ' ' 

If any one can show sufficient cause why a law should not 
be, first made, and then executed, defining as treason, and pun- 
ishing with the death-penalty, every wilful corrupting of the civil 
27 



314 APPENDIX. 

Iballot, every counterfeiting of the national currency, and every 
wilful fraud on the national treasury, by making his reasons 
known, such person will relieve a somewhat prevalent and pain- 
ful sense of deficiency in our national government. 



The proposition proposed to be supported by what is appended 
here, is, that the great majority of the masses of the Jackson- 
Buchanan party had been so acted on, by the principles and 
practices of that party, tending to deprave and despotize them, 
that up to the fall elections of 1863 they still adhered to the 
cause of Davis and their former chiefs. The following, from 
the "Boston Journal " of October 16th, demonstrates the real, 
which was the scarcely disguised, character of a man, of whose 
perjury and treason those masses previously had all the evi- 
dence of which the nature of the case admitted, and for whom 
they still cast their votes for governor in Ohio to the extent of 
150,000. 

We append a letter from Yallandigham which was recently 
captured in Tennessee among the baggage and private papers of 
the rebel officer to whom it was addressed. It was the most 
striking proof yet adduced of the treason of the man who has, 
been so emphatically repudiated by the people of Ohio, although 
it is in perfect keeping with his whole course since the outbreak 
of the Bebellion. We can say that Ohio has made a decided and 
happy escape from being turned over into the hands of a "traitor. 

Dear Colonel: — Your kind note and invitation of yester- 
day was tliis morning handed me by your brother-in-law who will 
hand you this in return. It would give me much pleasure to 
visit you and your command before leaving the Confederacy, but 
it is now impossible to do so, as I have made arrangements to 
start this a, m. with the earliest train for Wilmington. 



APPENDIX. 315 

You sunnise coiTectly, when you say that you believe me 

TO BE THE FRIEND OF THE SoUTH IN HER STRUGGLE FOR 

FREEDOM. My feelings have been publicly expressed in my own 
country, in that quotation from Lord Chatham — " My Lords, 
you carinot conquer America.''' There is not a drop of Puritan 
blood in my veins. I hate, despise and defy the ty- 
rannical government which has sent me among you, for my 
opinion's sake, and shall never give it my support in its 
crusade upon your institutions. But you are mistaken 
when you say there are but few such in the United States, 
North. Thousands are there who would speak out but for 
the military despotism that strangles them. 

Although the contest has been, and will continue to be, a 
bloody one, you have but to persevere and the victory 
will surely be yours. You must strike home ! The de- 
fensive policy lengthens the contest. The shortest road to peace 
is the boldest one. You can have your own terms by gain- 
ing the battle on your enemy's soil. 

Accept my kind regard for your personal welfare, and sm- 
cere thanks for your kind wishes in my behalf, and hoping and 
praying for the ultimate cause in which you are fight- 
ing, believe me as ever your friend, 

C. L. VALLANDIOHAM. 

Col. D. D. Inshall, 8th Ala. Vols. 

A few weeks earlier, upwards of 50,000 of the same masses 
in Maine gave then* votes for a guberaatorial candidate that stood 
pledged to cooperate with Yallandigham in carrymg out his prin- 
ciples and pohcy ; and on the same day of the election in Ohio, 
249,865 of the same depraved and despotized masses, out of a 
whole voting population of 515,003 m Pennsylvania, put forth . 
then' utmost effort to elect for that State a governor of the same 
principles ancl aims with Yallandigham. 

Eeverses to the national arms, or the desperate exertions of 



316 APPENDIX. 

/ 

their old leaders, were and still are, liable from the old stock of 
that party to raise those numbers to ruling majorities in either 
and each of the above-named States, as they did last year in 
New York and Indiana. 

Thus near had Democracy in America, and the last hope of a 
t3n'ant-ridden world, been brought to extinction, by the operation 
of the principles and practices of the above-named political par- 
ty, acting on the masses of the population that bad been directly 
and fully under their influence. 

In the light of recent developments, we will here glance at 
another source of peril to the same cause that arose from a some- 
what diifarent quarter. The following, from the " Portland Cou 
rier " of October 22d' 1863, is a fit and reliable commentary on 
the letter that succeeds : — 

Everybody who reads the "Boston Journal," knows that Bur. 
leigh, who writes the New York and Saratoga gossip for that pa- 
per, has always been partial to General McClellan, and has writ- 
ten m.any sentences in his favor. . The late letter of General 
McClellan, however, has wrought a change, and Burleigh speaks 
of it as follows : — 

The pohtical letter of Gen. McClellan, intending to aid in the 
defeat of Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, has been read with 
profound sorrow by thousands of his friends. When it was an- 
nounced that guch a letter had been written by him, few believed 
it. His long silence under the heavy charges preferred against 
him by the Congressional Committee — his patient waiting under 
what many supposed were wrongs inflicted upon hi-m — his man- 
ly submission to tha decree which condemned him to semi-dis- 
grace — the belief that m due time he would vindicate himself 
— gave him a strong hold on the public sympathy. His silence 
when his military ability and honor were assailed, and the- 
promptness with which he defends his political opinions are not 
the least remarkable things in this letter. But the character of 



APPENDIX. 31 T 

the letter itself has probably done the work for Gen. McOlellan, 
It justifies what his enemies have long charged upon him in his 
method of conducting the war. He comes, uncalled for, a vol- 
unteer witness in Court to aid his enemies, and to enable them to 
do what, without his efforts, they could never have done. He 
shows that his heart was never in the war ; that he intended to 
cany on a defensive, and not an offensive war ; that he would 
defend the capital and all the soil held by the loyal North, beat 
back the Rebels, in every attempt to advance out of the seceding 
States, to hold them in check till the Northern elections should 
change the admuiistration, and so secure peace by compromise, 
and not by the sword. The letter justifies the President in the 
removal of McClellan from the command of the army. All tes- 
timony concedes that McClellan was a great favorite with the 
President. While his headquarters were in Washington the 
President saw him every day, and passed most of his evenings 
with him. He generally called him " Georgie," and was tender- 
ly attached to him. To give him up cost hun a long and painful 
struggle. It was not until he was thoroughly convinced that 
the policy of Gen. McClellan, which he would not change, was 
irreconcilable with the preservation of our national life, that he 
gave the order for his removal. Such a letter as this of 
McClellan would have killed Junius. 

Orange, New Jersey, Oct. 12th, 1863. 
Hon. Charles J. Biddle. 

Dear Sir : — My attention has been called to an article in the 
''Philadelphia Press," asserting that I had written to the manag- 
ers of the Democratic meeting at AUentown, disapproving of the 
objects of the meeting, and that if I voted and spoke, it would 
be in favor of Governor Curtin. 

I am informed that similar assertions have been made through- 
out the State. It has been my earnest endeavor heretofore to 
avoid participation in party politics, and I had determined to ad- 
27* 



318 APPENDIX. 

here to tliis course ; but it is obvious that I cannot long maintain 
silence under such misrepresentations. I therefore request you to 
deny that I have written any such letter, or entertained any such 
views as those attributed to me in the " Philadelphia Press." 

I desire to state clearly and distinctly that having some few 
days ago had a full conversation with Judge Woodward, I find 
that our views agree, and I regard his election as Governor of 
Pennsylvania called for by the interest of the nation. 

I understand Judge Woodward to be in favor of the prosecu- 
ion of the war with all the means at the command of the loyal 
States, until the military power of the Rebellion is destroyed. 

I understand him to be of the opinion that while war is waged 
with all possible decision and energy, the policy directing it 
should be in consonance with the principles of humanity and civ- 
ilization, working no injury to private rights and property not de- 
manded by military necessity and recognized by military law 
among civihzed nations. And finally, 

I understand him to agree with me in the opinion that the 
sole great objects of the war are the restoration of the Union of 
the nation, the preservation of the Constitution and the suprem- 
acy of the laws of the country. 

Believing that our opinions entirely agree , upon these points, 
I would, were it in my power, give to Judge Woodward my 
voice and my vote. 

I am, very respectfully, yours, 

George B. McClellan. 

Three historic characters here present themselves. Judge 
Woodward, Gen. McClellan, and President Lincoln. 

Judge Woodward, but for his insignificance, might with pro- 
priety be termed James Buchanan No. 2, and appears justly to 
meiit all the increase of odium that attaches to the character that 
term describes at the present, in comparison with a former day. 
There appears to have been scarcely anything, short of the overt 



APPENDIX. 319 

act of treason wMcli would have condemned him to the gallows, 
which he has not done, in the fore-front of the Rebel sympathiz- 
ers, to aid the traitor's cause. Of what he had said and done in 
this direction, he had swallowed, contradicted, and undone noth- 
ing, more than would have been swallowed, contradicted, and un- 
done by any man of his political school, to gain the votes of men 
less traitorous than himself. 

All this was perfectly known to McClellan. It was known to 
him that the positions occupied by Woodward and Vallandigham, 
and the measures resorted to to sustain these positions at the same 
time in the several States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, were sub- 
stantially parallel."* And yet McClellan could not restrain him- 
self from coming out at the last decisive hour, in a carefully 
worded but desperate effort to throw Pennsylvania and the Un- 
ion back into the hands of such men as Judge Woodward, f 
James Buchanan, Isaac Toucey, John B. Floyd, Franklin 
Pierce, Jefferson Davis, and to subject Pennsylvania and the 
Union again to the operation of the political principles, which 
these names represent. 

From July 27th, 1861, to November 9th, 1862, George B. 
McClellan commanded the army of the Potomac, and, dui'ing 
several months of this time, the armies of the United States. 
When first called to that position of unparalleled importance and 

* See Appendix D. 

t Judge Woodward, the opposition candidate for Governor of Pennsylva- 
nia, has been convicted, on the strongest authority, of having publicly de- 
clared in the spring of 1861 that if these States are to be separated he hoped 
Pennsylvania would go with the South, which was then about to take 
arms to break down the government. 

Mr. George W. Hart of Philadelphia, always a Democrat hitherto, says 
in a letter that he travelled three days with Judge Woodward, the Demo- 
cratic candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, and heard him say often 
that this " was an unconstitutional war and an abolition v/ar, and that he 
had no interest whatever in the result, let this result be what it might ; that 
it was a contest in which the North could gain neither credit nor honor, and 
this he believed would be the verdict of history." — Boston Journal, Sept, 
26 and Oct. Bd, 1863. 



320 APPENDIX. 

responsibility, he was hailed with a universal welcome. The 
talents he displayed in organizing a vast army, and in inspiring 
his men with hope and confidence, commanded universal admu-a- 
tion. The loyal milHons breathed freer at his advent, introduced 
and endorsed as he was by the retiring veteran of peerless re- 
nown, who had preceded liim. The friends of Free-government 
throughout the world were glad that their cause had fallen into so 
able hands. 

Had the sun stood still, and all human events and actions sus- 
pended progress, at the point at which General McClellan ma- 
tured the recraitmg and organizing of his army, then might his 
name have remained illustrious, — at least, with some dawning 
beams about it. But on no other condition could he be spared 
the necessity of acting out, on a transcendently important and 
conspicuous arena, the principles of his heart. 

What was the record ? Delay in advancing to Manassas — 
defeated by Fabian tactics — delay at Yorktown — 80,000 men 
consumed by the heat of summer in the malarious swamps of the 
Chickahominy, and in the overwhelming assaults which his de- 
lays obtained for him — Pope and his army immolated at the sec- 
ond battle of Bull Run, through the obstinate tardiness, or wilful 
refusal of McClellan and his crony commanders, to forward the 
needed succor as commanded. Next came the terrible day of 
Antietam, on which McClellan refrained from firing a shot, more 
than was indispensable to prevent Baltimore, Philadelphia, and 
Washington from falhng immediately into the enemy's hands. 

What does all this mean ? — ■ the astonished, bewildered, dis- 
heartened and stricken loyalists in this country, and the friends 
of liberal government throughout the world, have been asking; 
and never, till George B. McClellan signed and sent that letter, 
to turn if possible the Pennsylvania election in favor of the Rebel 
sympathizers,"* has light enough been accumulated to enable any 

* Philadelphia, Nov. 11. Judges Lourie, "Woodward and Thompson of 
the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in session at Pittsburg, being a majori- 



APPENDIX. 321 

one who was at liberty to do so, reliably to interpret this page of 

appalling history. 

ty of the Court, gave a decision on Monday relative to certain drafted men, 
in effect declaring the conscription act unconstitntional. 

The Eiots in the Coal Districts. — A special correspondent of the 
Philadelphia Press ^Tites from Mauch Chunk, Pa., on the 7th instant, as 
follows : — 

" Several accounts appeared during the last few days in Philadelphia and 
New York papers of the ' riots ' in this region, and the murder of Mr. G. K. 
Smith, one of our best and most valuable citizens. The accounts given are, 
as far as they go, substantially correct. The murders committed, however, 
are not ' riots,' but the work of assassins, extensively organized throughout 
the coal region ; and the leading Copperheads are the chief instigators. 

" The murderers are all Irish, organized under the name of ' Buckshots ' for 
the avowed purpose of resisting the draft. They number probably several 
thousand in the mines of Beaver Meadow, Colerain, Jeanesville, Ilazleton, 
Audenried, Yorktown, Frenchtown, Spring Mountain and Mount Pleasant, 
They are all armed either with shot-guns, rifles, muskets, or revolvers. The 
most notorious Copperheads of om- place counselled them to arm themselves 
' to defend their liberties,' and to ' resist the tyranny of the Lincoln despot- 
ism.' The beasts, duped by these demagogues, declare their determination to 
drive out of the mines every one Avho is not of their own stripe ; and a mimber 
of Welshmen, Englishmen, Protestant Iiish, Germans, and Americans have 
been waylaid and murdered by them during the last two or three months. 
About two months ago, one of these Buckshots was arrested near Beaver 
Meadow, and lodged in our jail, on a charge of assault and battery with in- 
tent to kill. On the following night, over one hundred Buckshots marched 
into town well armed, arriving here about one o'clock in the morn- 
ing, surrounded the jail, and rescued the prisoner. No effort was made by 
the civil authorities to arrest the offenders, although the grand jury, last 
month, presented the names of a number of persons who participated in the 
outrage. The district attorney, being of the most malignant stamp of Cop- 
perheads, refused, and continues to refuse, any steps calculated to bring 
these villains to justice. The high sheriff of the county, it is believed, 
would prefer doing his duty; but he being in the Copperhead boat cannot do 
so. He has made no effort to raise a po&se comitatus for the arrest of these 
or any other outlaws in our county. Even one of the associate judges of 
our court, and leading officer of one of the most prosperous and respectable 
local corporations, it is said, discountenanced any effort to arrest ' Buck- 
shots,' simply because they (the Democracy) ' need their votes, and must not 
offend them.' 

" Thus encouraged by our local authorities, these outlaws frequently de- 
clared their determination to not only kill every officer who would undertake 



322 APPENDIX. 

In the war of the American Revolution, Great Britain failed 
to subdue the revolted colonies for lack of military commanders 
who heartily undertook the task assigned them. The policy of 
McClellan and of the political school to which he lent himself 
appears to have been, to defeat the efforts of the present ad- 
mmistration through the operation of a similar cause, to keep the 
losses, exhaustion, and bloodshed of the present war about equal- 
ly divided between the two contending sections, call it a drawn 
game, and submit tlie questions at issue back to the operation 
of the same causes that fii'st brought them under the arbitration 
of the sword ! In other words, that policy was, so to conduct 
the existing war, that its cost, its sufferings, and its slaughtered 
thousands, should just avail as a judicious blood-letting io re- 
duce the Southern leaders to the position they occupied before 
they bolted from their fellow partisans at the Charleston Conven- 
tion, and thus enable the old political party to revalidate its old 
usurpation, and handle its old opponents with all the greater ease 
by as much as they had been impoverished and decimated in 
the war ! ! 

Let him, if such an one there be, who is competent to the 
task, do justice to the events, and fitly characterize the actors 
presented on this page of history ! 

If General George B. McClellan failed to fulfil the expecta- 
tions entertained of him as Commander-in-Chief of the Union 
forces, or as Commander of the magnificent army of the Poto- 
mac, those expectations appear to have been disappointed, not 
because he lacked the power, but because he lacked the will, 
that was requisite for their fulfilment. The reticence with which 
he suppressed his real sentiments and aims, and the success- 
ful address with which he kept the administration at his chariot- 
to enforce the draft, but also to put out of the way every one suspected of 
sympathy with the government. They openly declare now their determi- 
nation to secure entire control of all the mines, and to stop the shipment of 
coal, and thus deprive the navy of this indispensable article." — Boston Jour- 
nal, Nw. 12th, 1863. 



APPENDIX. 323 

wheel, while he carried those sentiments into effect, and advanced 
those aims towards their final achievement, on so vast a scale, in- 
doctrinating his generals and attaching to himself the rank and 
file of his army, prove General McClellan to be well endowed 
with executive ability to accomplish anything that he has the 
moral elevation to attempt. 

The peril that arose, to the cause of popular government in 
general and to the United States in particular, from the course 
of General McClellan while in command of United States forces, 
may be traced to its primal soui'ce in the causes that had despo- 
tized the masses of the Jackson-Buchanan party. He is an emi- 
nent individual specimen of what elsewhere appears in depraved 
masses. But it is another source of peril displayed in this 
connection, to which we here glance briefly. 

Whatever was wanting in tenderness was made up in strength, 
in the composition of that man who could see more than one 
hundred thousand of his fellow-citizens consumed before his face 
in fifteen months by disease and casualties, from the ranks under 
his command, — to say nothing of the neai'ly equal waste that oc- 
curi'ed simultaneously just across the line in his front, — and per- 
sist in regarding the whole as an ordinary, and perhaps-to-be-re- 
peated sacrifice to the Moloch of his political party ; and, at the 
end put forth his earnest efibrt to prevent the disaster from avail- 
ing for any higher end. Far less extensive views than General 
McClellan had, of the disaster and sorrow brought upon their 
countrymen by the nefarious originators of this war, had availed 
to turn the jiidginents and the hearts of tens of thousands of Mc- 
Clellan' s fellow-pailisans who went into the war as honest and as 
earnest in their allegiance to his pohtical party as himself But 
out of it aU McClellan came with an obdurate few, unable to see 
any object to be accomplished by the incomputable costs, higher 
or holier than the restoration of the policy of Pierce, Buchanan, 
and Toucey with its attendant benefits, to "the interest of 
the nation" — unable to ^pire to any higher or holier political 



324 APPENDIX. 

vocation tban, with men like these, to grind in the prison- 
house of that foul sect, with a view to keeping in subjection 
under them all those of their remaining fellow-citizens who aspire 
to the attainment of a political destiny less ignominious than 
their own. " Join our pohtical party, and follow the leaders or 
be left out in the cold " — " to the victors belong the spoils " — 
is the language with which they prepare to greet us, the moment 
that any kind or amount of political fraud or villany enables 
them to elect the candidate of their nominating. 

That the inaugural address of President Lincoln seemed defi- 
cient in boldness, was attributed at the time to a sagacious, but 
not the less decided, prudence. That no prompt, decisive steps 
were taken to arrest the progress of insurgent fortifications 
around Charleston, and to reinforce Fort Sumter, sickened the 
loyal heart. That seventeen months of the war, with their slaugh- 
ter and their cost, went by without the administration having 
adopted any principle or policy that appeared adequate to secure 
a beneficial result, or even to end the fight, appalled the thought- 
ful friends of popular government in this country and in Europe. 
It was presumed that the diplomatic member of President Lin- 
coln's Cabinet, with undue influence was inducing his chief to 
found his plans and expectations, not so much on the rock of 
any particular civil tmths or pruiciples, as on the fathomless 
abyss of diplomacy. That President Lincoln, during much of this 
time was spending his evenings in the fascinatmg company of a 
man, who, after passing through the war-experience of that com- 
manding general, would put his name to such a letter as was ad- 
dressed to Chaiies J. Biddle on the eve of the late Pennsylva- 
nia election, was a calamity, a tremendous peril, — a verging 
of the car of Liberty along the brink of chaos, — which free- 
dom's friends at the time were spared the misery of contem- 
plating. Now that we see it in the fight of accompfished facts, 
it reminds one of Marshal Grouchy on the eve of Waterloo, in 
conference with the emissary of the •Allies. To subject him- 



APPENDIX. 325 

self and his country's cause to the effect of such a perilous 
temptation displayed President Lincoln's sad trait. To extricate 
himself and his cause from the impending ruin, almost unharmed 
— to rebound into the hne of clear, decisive, necessary, and glori- 
ously successful pohcy which his former fascinator is now strug- 
gling to resist, displays President Lincoln's redeeming excellence 
in its tardy but ultknate ascendency, — displays perhaps the 
"grace of God that was given unto him" in answer to the 
prayers of God's imperilled, behoving people. 



In a letter to the General Assembly of Ohio, acknowledging 
the receipt of a resolution of thanks from that body to the Army 
of the Cumberland and its officers, Gen. Kosecrans employs the 
following emphatic language : — 

" This is indeed a war for the maintenance of the Constitution 
and the laws — nay, for national existence against those who 
have despised our honest friendship, deceived our just hopes, and 
driven us to defend our country and our homes. By foul and 
wilful slanders on our motives and intentions, persistently repeat- 
ed, they have arrayed against us our own fellow-citizens, bound 
to us by the triple ties of consanguinity, geographical position, 
and commercial interest. 

" Let no man among us be base enough to forget this, or fool 
enough to trust an ohgai'chy of traitors to their friends, to civil 
liberty, and human freedom. Voluntary exiles from home and 
friends, for the defence and safety of all, we long for the time 
when gentle peace shall again spread her wings over our land ; 
but we know no such blessing is possible while the unjust and 
arbitrary power of the Rebel leaders confronts and threatens us, 
Crafty as the fox, cruel as the tiger, they cried ' No coercion,' 
while preparmg to strike us. Bully-like they proposed to fight 
us because they said they could whip five to one ; and now, 



326 APPENDIX. 

when driven back, tliey whine out ' no invasion,' and promise us 
of the West permission to na\agate the Mississippi, if we will be 
' good boys,' and do as they bid us. 

" Whenever they have the power, they drive before them into 
their ranks the Southern people, and they would also drive us. 
Trust them not. Were they able, they would invade and destroy 
us without mercy. Absolutely assured of these things, I am 
amazed that any one could think of ' peace on any terms.' He 
who entertains the sentiment is fit only to be a slave ; he who 
utters it at this time is, moreover, a traitor to his country, who 
deserves the scorn and contempt of all honorable men. When 
the power of the unscrupulous Rebel leaders is removed, and the 
people are free to consider and act for their own interests, which 
are common with ours under this government, there will be no 
great difficulty in fraternization." — Boston Journal, Feb. X^th, 
1863 

Of the above extract from Gen. Rosecrans's letter it may be 
said that an equal amount of sagacious statesmanship and patri- 
otic faithfulness has not been expressed in the same space, — 
has not been compressed into any one document, — (it may al- 
most be said) has not been expressed in all the documents and 
speeches which the present war has brought out. It presents 
Gen. Rosecrans hunself, simply, unsubverted, unsophisticated, 
an American Democrat in the true and proper meaning of the 
term. 

The following, translated from the " Gourrierdes EtatsUnis,''^ 
which professes to have obtained it from a Cincinnati correspon- 
dent, represents Gen. Rosecrans in the shape to wliich he would 
be reduced, and in the attitude and light in which he would be 
placed by his spiritual advisers, the emissaries of the " decrepit 
giant " who, as seen from Bedford jail two hundred years ago, 
was "biting his nails" for lack of power to commit the 
devastation he desired; provided said emissaries succeed to 
theu' minds in accomplishing the mission on which they have 
been sent. 



APPENDIX. 327 

*' Persons who are on intimate terms witli Gen. Rcsecrans de- 
clare that he is greatly discouraged about the war. This is not 
because he considers the Southern armies invincible, but because 
he believes that the seceded States can never be brought back by 
the rigorous policy which the government has adopted. He has 
never taken any part in the proceedings of Andrew Johnson, the 
military governor of Tennessee, who has succeeded in converting 
to Secession all people who had any hopes of the Union. Him- 
self perfectly disinterested, he looks with disgust upon the 
shameful traffic which is going on under the mask of patriotism. 
When he looks around him, he sees men moved by all sorts of 
motives, more or less decent, except honor and the love of coun- 
try. Some are fighting from ambition, others from avarice ; to 
the latter the conquest of countiy means only pillage and cheap 
cotton ; the former arc jealous of their superiors and their 
equals, and are delighted with any reverse which may overtake 
them. 

"Profoundly honest and rehgious, Ptosecrans regai-ds these 
spectacles with bitter aversion. His religious feehngs have grown 
upon liim in proportion to the excesses and intrigues which he is 
impotent to prevent; and, in mystical hopes of another world, he 
seeks relief from the conniptions of the present. He no longer 
fio-hts with any ardor, but simply from a sense of duty, consider- 
ino- each victory a useless waste of blood. He has no confi- 
dence in his successes, considering that they are followed by the 
swoop of birds of prey whose rapacity makes hopeless the pacifi- 
cation of the country All these details come to me from 

a person very dear to Rosecrans, to whom the General wrote that 
he saw in the defeat of Chickamauga the finger of God." — Bos- 
ton Journal, Oct. 21th, 1863. 



328 APPENDIX. 

TO THE BAFFLED DESPOTS OF THE SOUTH. 



Ye are going down whence ye rose at first, 
From the face of the Land your lust has cursed ; 
From the hght of your hope, and your lied-for crown, 
In darkness and blood ye are going down. 

Ye chose you a corner whereon to rear 

The throne of your power, a realm of fear ; 

Ye swore to rule with a despot's rod 

O'er the Land, the People, and the Saints of God. 

The sable sons of a heathen race 
Long bowed to your mandates with abject grace ; 
And your slaveless kindred, bereft of dower, 
Have quailed and bled 'ueath your crushing power, 

Till the voice of their blood, fi-om the wreaking sod. 
Has entered the ears of an incensed God, 
And beneath the blight of his burning frown, 
To the despot's doom ye are going down. 

*' Hell from beneath is moved for thee,* 
The despot dead thy coming greet, — 

' Art thou also become weak as we ? ' 

The defunct kings of the nations shriek. 

" In glory each in his house they lie, 

But thou, cast out, art keenly scanned, 
And trampled down by each passer-by. 
Because thou hast destroyed thy land. 

" The whole earth is at rest once more, 

The trees and the fields rejoice 'gainst thee.*' 
And wide and deep as Ocean's roar. 
Goes up the song of slaves set free. 

The despots slain mid Freedom's Home, 

The boldest, bloodiest of their kind. 
We trust may be the, last that come. 

Their shackles on our limbs to bind. 

January 16, 1864. 

* laalah, adv. 



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